“Will you have the goodness to stay with my wife?” he asked suddenly, giving her a keen intelligent glance, which also seemed to her to convey to her a certain warning. “With pleasure,” she replied. “But don’t leave me behind, Adrian,” cried Nance. “I know Lady Georgina is kind, but I am terrified to be left without you. Please take me with you to town.” “I’ll send for you if necessary, Nancy,” he replied after a brief pause. “You are surely not going to stay away long?” she asked with a gasp of terror. He did not answer her, neither did he kiss her; there was an expression about his face which she could not fathom. Half an hour later he went away. CHAPTER XXVIII. HESTER. Jacob witnessed the parting between his master and mistress in the great hall of the old house. Without apparently noticing anything, he yet saw with vivid distinctness the queer grey pallor on Adrian Rowton’s face; he noticed how Nance bit her lips, how tightly her hands were locked together; he saw a look in her eyes which touched him in spite of himself. The look was one of agony. As Nance bade a voiceless good-bye to her husband, her soul seemed to look straight into his. Jacob saw it all without appearing to see. “Poor young lady,” he muttered under his breath; “it ain’t in me to be very sorry for anyone, but if I could have a spice of feeling it would be for Mrs. Adrian Rowton. She is so pretty and so kind. Whatever possessed her to give herself up, heart and soul, to that devil-may-care chap?—and yet, and yet, if he were not what he is, I could find it in my heart not to be greatly surprised. Ah, my fine fellow, you’ll know what Jacob Short has found out about you. You’ll lay low enough before long.” As these thoughts flitted through his mind, the footman turned slowly in the direction of the servants’ premises. He was met just outside the servants’ hall by the housekeeper. “Well, now,” she said, “here’s a new trouble.” “And what is that, ma’am?” asked Jacob. “Why, as if we had not worries enough, there’s that tiresome girl, Hester Winsome, has gone and been taken real bad.” “Bad?” echoed Jacob; “how so?” “You may well ask how so.” “Now I come to think of it,” answered Jacob, “she did look a bit queer at dinner-time.” “Well, she is queerer now; she is up in her room sobbing and moaning and clasping her hands, and crying that she wishes to heaven she had never set foot in this place, and that her pain is more than she can bear. Pain of mind, it seems to me, for I can’t make out that there’s anything wrong with her body.” “I wonder, now,” said Jacob, after a somewhat long pause, during which he was thinking deeply—“I wonder, now, if she would see me. Perhaps you have noticed, ma’am, that I have a soothing sort of way with me.”