OPHELIA STRONG had abandoned St. Aylmers and descended unannounced upon Saltire with bag and baggage. The irrepressible Miss Saker accompanied her. Manifold confidences had of late passed between the two, confidences of a most intimate and interesting nature. Miss Saker, at her “dear friend’s” earnest desire, had accompanied her to Saltire to support her in the somewhat delicate dramaticisms that threatened the domestic peace.

Time, that green-eyed quipster, had set so cunningly the dial of circumstance that Ophelia’s return fell upon the day when Gabriel and Joan took leave of each other under the yews in Burnt House garden. It was late in the afternoon when Gabriel, parched and miserable, came up the road from Steelcross Bridge across the Mallan and saw a carriage swing into The Friary gate with a swirl of dust from the white highway. Two parasols, red and blue, flashed in the victoria, hiding the occupants as the carriage rounded the curve of the stone wall. The man’s conjectures, rife on the instant, suggested Judith and the Saltire equipage. As for his wife, her last letter had prophesied her advent as fixed for the second week in June. Tired and miserable as he was, he was in no mood for a social ordeal. At the lodge gate his gardener’s wife informed him with a courtesy that the young mistress had just driven up from the station.

No tidings could have been more leaden to the man’s mind, weighted as it was with a misery gotten of the tragic temper of the day. He passed up the drive unwillingly enough, heeding nothing, the banks of rhododendrons shining mauve and white and red. Entering upon the sleek stretch of lawn, with its standard roses hung with the lamps of June, its beds brilliant with geranium and lobelia, he found the carriage standing empty before the porch. James, the butler, was removing sundry wraps and parcels from the cushions. The man smiled in a peculiar, starched fashion when he saw his master, and jerked a grimace at the coachman, a grimace tipped with a coarse innuendo suited to the tongue of a pantry cynic.

Gabriel, entering the hall of his own home, saw his wife standing in the centre of a blood-red Oriental carpet, with the carved front of an antique cupboard for a background. She was wearing a large hat trimmed with white sea-bird’s wings and sky-blue silk; her dress of olive gray with green facings was moulded to her figure, throwing into evidence in the French fashion the fulness of her bust and the contour of her hips. Despite her journey, she appeared fresh as a pink azalea in bloom, boasting more color than of yore, plumper about the mouth. There was even a suspicion of pencilling about the finely arched brows and the too languorous lids. Possibly the first thing Gabriel noted about his wife was the petulant glint of her blue eyes, a feline gleam that he had grown familiar with of old.

His sensations were peculiarly incongruous for the moment. It was four months since they had met, and her sudden presence there that day quickened his moody discontent. Nor could he save his senses from being enveloped by the sheer loveliness of the woman, her sinuous, tiger-like perfection of body. She was one of those suggestive beings such as Parisian society might delight in. Contrasted with the spiritual image graven upon Gabriel’s brain, his wife seemed a mere voluptuary snatched from the canvas of a Rubens.

The greeting between man and wife was in every sense prophetic. Neither approached the other; they stood at a little distance, looking tentatively into each other’s eyes. There were sketches—blurs of color—upon the panelled walls. A suit of armor, grotesquely sullen, stood at the man’s right hand. The place was full of shadows, though the garden was gay without.

“This is a bolt from the blue,” said the man, with a strained yet niggardly enthusiasm. “I never thought I should find you here.”

“You had my telegram,” came the clear retort.

“No; I had turned out early and so missed it. I did not expect you till I saw your carriage.”

The woman’s face seemed to grow paler, giving her eyes a yet more sensuous brilliance.

“So it seems,” she said. “I hope you are not grievously disappointe............