"There's Geoffrey. Come in, old boy. We've only just begun."

Half an hour's exhibition followed. Both Helena and French were intelligent spectators, and their amazement at the quality and variety of the work shown them seemed half-welcome, half-embarrassing to their host.

"Why don't you go on with it? Why don't you exhibit?" cried Helena.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"It doesn't interest me now. It's a past phase."

She longed to ask questions. But his manner didn't encourage it. And when the half-hour was done he looked at his watch.

"Dressing-time," he said, smiling, holding it out to Helena. She rose at once. Philip was a delightful artist, but the operations of dressing were not to be trifled with. Her thanks, however, for "a lovely time!"

and her pleading for a second show on the morrow, were so graceful, so sweet, that French, as he silently put the drawings back, felt his spirits drop to zero. What could have so changed the thorny, insolent girl of six weeks before--but the one thing? He stole a glance at Buntingford. Surely he must realize what was happening--and his huge responsibility--he _must_.

Helena disappeared. Geoffrey volunteered to tie up a portfolio they had only half examined, while Buntingford finished a letter. While he was handling it, the portfolio slipped, and a number of drawings fell out pell-mell upon the floor.

Geoffrey stooped to pick them up. A vehement exclamation startled Buntingford at his desk.

"What's the matter, Geoffrey?"

"Philip! _That's_ the woman I saw!--that's her face!--I could swear to it anywhere!"

He pointed with excitement to the drawing of a woman's head and shoulders, which had fallen out from the very back of the portfolio, whereof the rotting straps and fastenings showed that it had not been opened for many years.

Buntingford came to his side. He looked at the drawing--then at French.

His face seemed suddenly to turn grey and old.

"My God!" he said under his breath, and again, still lower--"_My God_! Of course. I knew it!"

He dropped into a chair beside Geoffrey, and buried his face in his hands.

Geoffrey stared at him in silence, a bewildering tumult of ideas and conjectures rushing through his brain.

Another knock at the door. Buntingford rose automatically, went to the door, spoke to the servant who had knocked, and came back with a note in his hand, which he took to the window to read. Then with steps which seemed to French to waver like those of a man half drunk he went to his writing-desk, and wrote a reply which he gave to the servant who was waiting in the passage. He stood a moment thinking, his hand over his eyes, before he approached his nephew.

"Geoffrey, will you please take my place at dinner to-night? I am going out. Make any excuse you like." He moved away--but turned back again, speaking with much difficulty--"The woman you saw--is at the Rectory.

Alcott took her in last night. He writes to me. I am going there."

CHAPTER XI

Buntingford walked rapidly across the park, astonishing the old lodge-keeper who happened to see him pass through, and knew that his lordship had a large Whitsuntide party at the house, who must at that very moment be sitting down to dinner.

The Rectory lay at the further extremity of the village, which was long and straggling. The village street, still bathed in sun, was full of groups of holiday makers, idling and courting. To avoid them, Buntingford stepped into one of his own plantations, in which there was a path leading straight to the back of the Rectory.

He walked like one half-stunned, with very little conscious thought. As to the blow which had now fallen, he had lived under the possibility of it for fourteen years. Only since the end of the war had he begun to feel some security, and in consequence to realize a new ferment in himself. Well--now at least he would _know_. And the hunger to know winged his feet.

He found a gate leading into the garden of the Rectory open, and went through it towards the front of the house. A figure in grey flannels, with a round collar, was pacing up and down the little grass-plot there, waiting for him.

John Alcott came forward at sight of him. He took Buntingford's hand in both his own, and looked into his face. "Is it true?" he said, gently.

"Probably," said Buntingford, after a moment.

"Will you come into my study? I think you ought to hear our story before you see her."

He led the way into the tiny house, and into his low-roofed study, packed with books from floor to ceiling, the books of a lonely man who had found in them his chief friends. He shut the door with care, suggesting that they should speak as quietly as possible, since the house was so small, and sound travelled so easily through it.

"Where is she?" said Buntingford, abruptly, as he took the chair Alcott pushed towards him.

"Just overhead. It is our only spare room."

Buntingford nodded, and the two heads, the black and the grey, bent towards each other, while Alcott gave his murmured report.

"You know we have no servant. My sister does everything, with my help, and a village woman once or twice a week. Lydia came down this morning about seven o'clock and opened the front door. To her astonishment she found a woman leaning against the front pillar of our little porch. My sister spoke to her, and then saw she must be exhausted or ill. She told her to come in, and managed to get her into the dining-room where there is a sofa. She said a few incoherent things after lying down and then fainted. My sister called me, and I went for our old doctor. He came back with me, said it was collapse, and heart weakness--perhaps after influenza--and that we must on no account move her except on to a bed in the dining-room till he had watched her a little. She was quite unable to give any account of herself, and while we were watching her she seemed to go into a heavy sleep. She only recovered consciousness about five o'clock this evening. Meanwhile I had been obliged to go to a diocesan meeting at Dansworth and I left my sister and Dr. Ramsay in charge of her, suggesting that as there was evidently something unusual in the case nothing should be said to anybody outside the house till I came back and she was able to talk to us. I hurried back, and found the doctor giving injections of strychnine and brandy which seemed to be reviving her.

While we were all standing round her, she said quite clearly--'I want to see Philip Buntingford.' Dr. Ramsay knelt down beside her, and asked her to tell him, if she was strong enough, why she wanted to see you. She did not open her eyes, but said again distinctly--'Because I am'--or was--I am not quite sure which--'his wife.' And after a minute or two she said twice over, very faintly--'Send for him--send for him.' So then I wrote my note to you and sent it off. Since then the doctor and my sister have succeeded in carrying her upstairs--and the doctor gives leave for you to see her. He is coming back again presently. During her sleep, she talked incoherently once or twice about a lake and a boat--and once she said--'Oh, do stop that music!' and moved her head about as though it hurt her. Since then I have heard some gossip from the village about a strange lady who was seen in the park last night. Naturally one puts two and two together--but we have said nothing yet to anyone. Nobody knows that she--if the woman seen in the park, and the woman upstairs are the same--is here."

He looked interrogatively at his companion. But Buntingford, who had risen, stood dumb.

"May I go upstairs?" was all he said.

The rector led the way up a small cottage staircase. His sister, a grey-haired woman of rather more than middle age, spectacled and prim, but with the eyes of the pure in heart, heard them on the stairs and came out to meet them.

"She is quite ready, and I am in the next room, if you want me. Please knock on the wall."

Buntingford entered and shut the door. He stood at the foot of the bed.

The woman lying on it opened her eyes, and they looked at each other long and silently. The face on the pillow had still the remains of beauty. The powerful mouth and chin, the nose, which was long and delicate, the deep-set eyes, and broad brow under strong waves of hair, were all fused in a fine oval; and the modelling of the features was intensely and passionately expressive. That indeed was at once the distinction and, so to speak, the terror of the face,--its excessive, abnormal individualism, its surplus of expression. A woman to fret herself and others to decay--a woman, to burn up her own life, and that of her lover, her husband, her child. Only physical weakness had at last set bounds to what had once been a whirlwind force.

"Anna!" said Buntingford gently.

She made a feeble gesture which beckoned him to come nearer--to sit down--and he came. All the time he was sharply, irrelevantly conscious of the little room, the bed with its white dimity furniture, the texts on the distempered walls, the head of the Leonardo Christ over the mantelpiece, the white muslin dressing-table, the strips of carpet on the bare boards, the cottage chairs:--the spotless cleanliness and the poverty of it all. He saw as the artist, who cannot help but see, even at moments of intense feeling.

"You thought--I was dead?" The woman in the bed moved her haggard eyes towards him.

"Yes, lately I thought it. I didn't, for a long time."

"I put that notice in--so that--you might marry again," she said, slowly, and with difficulty.

"I suspected that."

"But you--didn't marry."

"How could I?--when I had no real evidence?"

She closed her eyes, as though any attempt to argue, or explain was beyond her, and he had to wait while she gathered strength again. After what seemed a long time, and in a rather stronger voice she said:

"Did you ever find out--what I had done?"