nnected with her death--she took an overdose of some
sleeping draught by mistake. However that may be, my father was
broken-hearted. Shortly afterwards, he went into the Consular Service.
Everywhere he went, I went with him. When I was twenty-three, I had been
nearly all over the world. It was a splendid life--I loved it."

There was a smile on her face, and her head was thrown back. She seemed
living in the memory of those old glad days.

"Then my father died. He left me very badly off. I had to go and live
with some old aunts in Yorkshire." She shuddered. "You will understand
me when I say that it was a deadly life for a girl brought up as I had
been. The narrowness, the deadly monotony of it, almost drove me mad."
She paused a minute, and added in a different tone: "And then I met John
Cavendish."

"Yes?"

"You can imagine that, from my aunts' point of view, it was a very good
match for me. But I can honestly say it was not this fact which weighed
with me. No, he was simply a way of escape from the insufferable
monotony of my life."

I said nothing, and after a moment, she went on:

"Don't misunderstand me. I was quite honest with him. I told him, what
was true, that I liked him very much, that I hoped to come to like him
more, but that I was not in any way what the world calls 'in love' with
him. He declared that that satisfied him, and so--we were married."

She waited a long time, a little frown had gathered on her forehead. She
seemed to be looking back earnestly into those past days.

"I think--I am sure--he cared for me at first. But I suppose we were not
well matched. Almost at once, we drifted apart. He--it is not a pleasing
thing for my pride, but it is the truth--tired of me very soon." I must
have made some murmur of dissent, for she went on quickly: "Oh, yes, he
did! Not that it matters now--now that we've come to the parting of the
ways."

"What do you mean?"

She answered quietly:

"I mean that I am not going to remain at Styles."

"You and John are not going to live here?"

"John may live here, but I shall not."

"You are going to leave him?"

"Yes."

"But why?"

She paused a long time, and said at last:

"Perhaps--because I want to be--free!"

And, as she spoke, I had a sudden vision of broad spaces, virgin tracts
of forests, untrodden lands--and a realization of what freedom would
mean to such a nature as Mary Cavendish. I seemed to see her for a
moment as she was, a proud w