he would have had a right to Laura Pavely's regard, but he knew now that
what had set ajar the portals of her at once desolate and burdened heart
had been his kindness to, even his business relationship with, her
brother.

Gillie Baynton? Yes, it was to that disconcerting and discordant human
chord that their two natures--his and Laura's--had perforce vibrated and
mingled. Remembering this, Oliver Tropenell reproved himself for his
past discontent with the partner who, whatever his failings, had always
shown him both gratitude and a measure of such real affection as a man
seldom shows another in a business relationship. In spite of Gillie's
faults--nay, vices--he, Tropenell, now often found himself favourably
comparing Laura's brother with Laura's husband.

Oliver Tropenell was acutely, intolerably, jealous of Godfrey
Pavely--jealous in the burning, scorching sense which is so often the
terrible concomitant of such a passion as that which now possessed him.
Godfrey Pavely's presence in his own house, his slightly tyrannical,
often possessive attitude to Laura, the perpetual reminder that he was,
after all, the father of the child Laura had borne, and who seemed to
fill her heart to the exclusion of all else--all this was for this man
who loved her an ever-recurring ordeal which might well have satisfied
the sternest moralist.

That night Oliver Tropenell dreamt of Laura. He thought that he was
pursuing her through a maze of flowering shrubs and trees. She was
fleeing from him, yet now and again she would turn, and beckon....

His first waking thought was that they would meet to-night--here, in his
mother's house. But before that happened a long day would have to be
lived through, for he had made up his mind not to go to The Chase till
Laura again asked him to do so.

CHAPTER III

The door of Mrs. Tropenell's long low drawing-room opened very quietly,
and Laura Pavely came through into the room.

She had left a brightly lighted hall for a room of which the only
present illumination radiated from a shaded reading lamp standing on a

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