But there\'s something yet to tell of the evening. It was getting towards dusk when Isaac Thornycroft went his way to Captain Copp\'s intending boldly to ask Miss Chester to take a walk with him, should there be no chance of getting a minute with her alone at home.

The state in which he was living, touching his wife\'s estrangement (not their separation, that was a present necessity), was getting unbearable; and Isaac, who had hitherto shunned an explanation, came to the rather sudden resolution of seeking it. Although his brother had shot Robert Hunter, it could not be said to be a just reason for Anna\'s resenting it upon him. Not a syllable did Isaac yet know of the discovery that had taken place, or that Cyril was the one lying in the churchyard.

In the free and simple community of Coastdown, doors were not kept closed, and people entered at will. Rather, then, to Isaac\'s surprise, as he turned the handle of Captain Copp\'s, he found it was fastened, so that he could not enter. At the same moment his eyes met his wife\'s, who had come to the window to reconnoitre. There was no help for it, and she had to go and let him in.

"At home alone, Anna! Where are they all? Where\'s Sarah?"

Anna explained: bare facts only, however, not motives. It appeared that the gallant captain, considerably lowered in his own estimation by the events of the past night, and especially that he should be so in the sight of his "womenkind," proposed a little jaunt that day to Jutpoint by way of diverting their thoughts, and perhaps his own, from the ghost and its reminiscences. His mother--recovered from her incipient cold--she was too strong-minded a woman for diseases to seize upon heartily--agreed readily, as did his wife. Not so Anna. She pleaded illness, and begged to be left at home. It was indeed no false plea, for her miserable state of mind was beginning to tell upon her. They had been expected home in time for tea, and had not come. Anna supposed they had contrived to miss the omnibus, which was in fact the case, and could not now return until late. How Mrs. Sam Copp would be brought by the churchyard was a thing easier wondered at than told. As to Sarah, she had but now stepped out on some necessary errands to the village.

In the satisfaction of finding the field undisturbed for the explanation he wished entered on, Isaac said nothing about his wife being left in the house alone, which he by no means approved of. It was not dark yet, only dusk: but Anna said something about getting lights.

"Not yet," said Isaac. "I want to talk to you; there\'s plenty of light for that."

She sat down on the sofa; trembling, frightened, sick. If her husband was the slayer of Robert Hunter--as she believed him to be--it was not agreeable to be in the solitary house with him; it was equally disagreeable to have to tell him to go out of it. Ah, but for that terrible belief, what a happy moment this snatch of intercourse might have been to them! this sole first chance for weeks and weeks of being alone, when they might speak together of future plans with a half-hour\'s freedom.

She took her seat on the sofa, scarcely conscious what she did in her sick perplexity. Isaac sat down by her, put his arm round her waist, and would have kissed her. But she drew to the other end of the large sofa with a gesture of evident avoidance, and burst into tears. So he got up and stood before her.

"Anna, this must end, one way or the other; it is what I came here to-night to say. The separated condition in which we first lived after our return was bad enough, but that was pleasant compared to what it afterwards became. It is some weeks now since you have allowed me barely to shake you by the hand; never if you could avoid it. Things cannot go on so."

She made no reply. Only sat there trembling and crying, her hands before her face.

"What have I done to you? Come, Anna, I must have an answer. What have I done to you?"

She spoke at last, looking up. In her habit of implicit obedience, there was no help for it; there could be none when the order came from him.

"Nothing----to me."

"To whom, then? What is it?"

"Nothing," was all she repeated.

"Nothing! Do you repent having married me?"

"I don\'t know."

The answer seemed to pain him. He bent his handsome face a little towards her, pushing back impatiently his golden hair, as if the fair bright brow needed coolness.

"I thought you loved me, Anna?"

"And you know I did. Oh, that is it! The misery would be greater if I loved you less."

"Then why do you shun me?"

"Is there not a cause why I should?" she asked in a low tone, after a long pause.

"I think not. Will you tell me what the cause may be?"

She glanced up at him, she looked down, she smoothed unconsciously the silk apron on which her nervous hands rested, but she could not answer. Isaac saw it, and, bending nearer to her, he spoke in a whisper.

"Is it connected with that unhappy night--with what took place on the plateau?"

"I think you must have known all along that it is."

"And you consider it a sufficient reason for shunning me?"

"Yes, do not you?"

"Certainly not."

Great though her misery was, passionately though she loved him still, the cool assertion angered her. It gave her a courage to speak that nothing else could have given.

"It was a dark crime; the worst crime that the world can know. Does it not lie on your conscience?"

"No; I could not hinder it."

"Oh, Isaac! Had it been anything else; anything but murder, I could have borne it. How you can bear it, and live, I cannot understand."

"Why should I make another\'s sin mine? No one can deplore it as I do; but it is not my place to answer for it. I do not understand you, Anna."

She did not understand. What did his words mean?

"Did you not kill Robert Hunter?"

"I kill him! You are dreaming, Anna! I was not near the spot."

"Isaac! ISAAC?"

"Child! have you been fearing that?"

"For nothing else, for nothing else could I have shunned you. Oh, Isaac! my dear husband, how could the mistake arise?"

"I know not. A mistake it was; I affirm it to you before God. I was not on the plateau at all that night."

He opened his arms, gravely smiling, and she passed into them with a great cry. Trembling, moaning, sobbing; Isaac thought she would have fainted. Placing her by his side on the sofa, he kept still, listening to what she had to say.

"As I looked out of the Round Tower in the starlight, I caught a momentary glimpse of--as I thought--you, and I saw the hand that held the pistol take aim and fire. I thought it was you, and I fainted. I have thought it ever since. Mary Anne, in a word or two that we spoke together, seemed to confirm it."

"Mary Anne knew it was not I. It is not in my nature to draw a pistol on any man. Surely, Anna, you might have trusted me better!"

"Oh, what a relief!" she murmured, "what a relief!" then, as a sudden thought seemed to strike her, she turned her face to his and spoke, her voice hushed.

"It must have been Richard. You are alike in figure."

"Upon that point we had better be silent," he answered, in quite a solemn tone. "It is a thing that we are not called upon to inquire into; let us avoid it. I am innocent: will not that suffice?"

"It will more than suffice for me," she answered. "Since that night I have been most wretched."

"You need not have feared me in any way, Anna," was the reply of Isaac Thornycroft. "Were it possible that my hand could become stained with the blood of a fellow-creature, I should hasten to separate from you quicker than you could from me. Whatever else such an unhappy man may covet, let him keep clear of wife and children."

"Forgive me, Isaac! Forgive me!"

"I have not been exempt from the follies of young men, and I related to you the greater portion of my share of them, after we married," he whispered. "But of dark crime I am innocent--as innocent as you are."

"Oh, Isaac! my husband, Isaac!"

He bent his face on hers, and she lay there quietly, her head nestling in his bosom. It seemed to her like a dream of heaven after the past; a very paradise.

"You will forgive me, won\'t you?" she softly breathed.

"My darling!"

But paradise cannot last for ever, as you all know; and one of them at any rate found himself very far on this side it ere the night was much older. As Sarah let herself into the house with her back-door key, Isaac quitted it by the front, and bent his steps across the heath.

In passing the churchyard, he stood and looked well into it. But there was no sign of the ghost, and Isaac went on again. How little did he suspect that at that very selfsame moment the ghost was seated round in the church porch, in deep conversation with his sister! Having an errand in the village, he struck across to it; and on his final return home a little later, he was astonished to overtake his sister at the entrance gates of the Red Court Farm, her forehead pressed upon the ironwork, and she sobbing as if her heart would break.

"Mary Anne! what is the matter? What brings you here?"

"Come with me," she briefly said. "If I do not tell some one, I shall die."

Walking swiftly to one of the benches on the lawn, she sat down on it, utterly indifferent to the rain that was beginning to fall. Isaac followed her wonderingly. Poor thing! the whole of the previous day and night she had really almost felt as if she should die--die from the weight of the fearful secret, and the want of some ............