arles was seized by a burning curiosity to know all where he already
knew so much, to put an end to this racking suspense.

"And that is not the worst," said Dare, when he had recounted how the
woman he had seen on the church steps was in very deed the wife she
claimed to be. "That is not the worst. I love another. We are affianced.
We are as one. I bring sorrow upon her I love."

"She knows, then?" asked Charles, hoarsely, hating himself for being
such a hypocrite, but unable to refrain from putting a leading question.

"She knows that some one--a person--is at Vandon," replied Dare, "who
calls herself my wife, but I tell her it is not true and she, all
goodness, all heavenly calm, she trusts me, and once again she promises
to marry me if I am free, as I tell her, as I swear to her."

Charles listened in astonishment. He saw Dare was speaking the truth,
but that Ruth could have given such a promise was difficult to believe.
He did not know, what Dare even had not at all realized, that she had
given it in the belief that Dare, from his answers to her questions, had
never been married to the woman at all, in the belief that she was a
mere adventuress seeking to make money out of him by threatening a
scandalous libel, and without the faintest suspicion that she was his
divorced wife, whether legally or illegally divorced.

Dare had understood the promise to depend on the legality or illegality
of that divorce, and told Charles so in all good faith. With an
extraordinary effort of reticence he withheld the name of his affianced,
and pressing Charles's arm, begged him to ask no more. And Charles,
half-sorry, half-contemptuous, wholly ashamed of having allowed such a
confidence to be forced upon him, marched on in silence, now divided
between mortal anxiety for Raymond and pity for Dare, now striving to
keep down a certain climbing rapturous emotion which would not be
suppressed.

One of the servants had waited up for their return, and, after getting
Dare something to eat, Charles took him up to the room which had been
prepared for himself, and then, feeling he had done his duty by him, and
that he was safe for the present, went back to smoke by the smoking-room
fire till Ralph came in, which was not till several hours later. When he
did at last return it was in triumph. He was dead-beat, voiceless, and
foot-sore; but a sense of glory sustained him. Four poachers had been
taken red-handed in the coverts farthest from Ar