Aliette continued her low-voiced description of the day's run; Hector tried explaining to an attentive Mollie the exact difference between a disbarred barrister and a solicitor who has been struck off the rolls; the cap-and-aproned wenches set an enormous joint of mutton before the host, who always insisted on carving with his own hands; and dinner proceeded.

To Hector Brunton's wife the dullish meal was less unpleasant than her anticipation of it. She caught him looking at her now, sideways across the vast white of the table-cloth. Vaguely she felt sorry for him. His cold eyes almost held an appeal. "Look round," they seemed to be saying, "it isn't so bad; really it isn't so bad, this little family party. Can't we make it up, you and I?"

"Poor Hector!" she thought. "He's a very simple person. He doesn't understand"; and checked thought, not abruptly, but with the same quiet firmness she had applied to Miracle that morning.

For Aliette never posed, even to herself. She was the very antithesis of the usual misunderstood married woman; so far, the mere thought of a compensating lover had never entered her head. All that happened afterward--and sometimes, looking back, it seems to her as though it all began from that chance remark of Adrian's--happened of its own volition. At the moment Adrian spoke she was just an ordinary woman, who had married an ordinary man in the expectation of a home and children, found him out in various infidelities, and decided--after due thought--that she could no longer pay his physical price for the dwindling possibility of motherhood.

"We had young Cavendish out with us to-day," said the parson. "Julia Cavendish's son. You know him, I suppose, Hector?"

"Yes. Clever fellow. No orator, but very sound on his law. He's doing junior to me in the Ellerson case. Rather an interesting case----"

"He and Aliette gave us all a lead."

"Rides well, does he?"

"Rather. A fine horseman. Handsome looking chap, too." The parson glanced at his sister-in-law, not maliciously, yet with a certain puzzlement. Listening with half an ear to her description of the run, he had wondered why she made no mention of the stranger. "Didn't you think so, Aliette?" he went on."I can't say I noticed his looks. He certainly rides well." The wallflower-brown eyes betrayed no startle, the pale, cream-tinged cheeks did not blush. Nevertheless, deep down in the inmost recesses of her nature, Aliette felt herself 

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