That drive home was a very silent one. Viola was suffering from reaction after excitement, and leaned back with a listless air. Madge looked straight before her, with grave fixed eyes, gazing into space. And still there was not a cloud in the blue bright sky, and the reapers standing amongst the tawny corn turned their swart faces towards the Squire’s carriage, and pulled their moistened forelocks, and thought what a fine thing it was for the gentry to be driving swiftly through the clear warm air, lolling back upon soft cushions, and with no more exertion than was involved in holding a silk umbrella. ‘But how white Madam Penwyn looks!’ said one of the men, a native of the place, to his mate. ‘She doant look as if the good things of this life agreed with her. She looks paler and more tired like than you nor me.’ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVI ‘THIS IS MORE STRANGE THAN SUCH A MURDER IS.’ THEY were in Madge’s dressing-room, that spacious, many-windowed chamber, with its closed venetians, which was cool and shadowy even on a blazing August day like this. They were alone together, husband and wife, face to face, two white faces turned towards each other, blanched by passions stronger and deeper than it is man’s common lot to suffer. They had come here straight from the carriage that brought them back to the Manor House, and they were alone for the first moment since Madge had heard Rebecca Mason’s petition. ‘Churchill,’ she said slowly, with agonized eyes lifted to his face, ‘I know all—all that woman could tell; and she showed me——’ She stopped, shuddering, and clasped her hands before her face. Her husband stood like a rock, and made no attempt to draw nearer to her. He stood aloof and waited. ‘I know all,’ she repeated, with a passionate sob, ‘and I remember what I said when you asked me to be your wife. You were too poor—we were too poor. I could not marry you because of your poverty. It was my worldliness, my mercenary decision that influenced you, that urged you to——Oh, Churchill, half the fault was mine. God give me leave to bear half the burden of His anger.’ She flung herself upon her husband’s shoulder, and sobbed there, clinging to him more fondly than in their happiest hour, her arms clasping him round the neck, her face hidden upon his breast, with such love as only such a woman can feel—love which, supreme in itself, rises above every lesser influence. ‘What! you touch me, Madge! You come to my arms still; you shed compassionate tears upon my breast. Then I am not wholly lost. Vile as I am, there is comfort still. My love, my fond one, fortune gave me nothing so sweet as you.’ ‘Oh, Churchill, why, why—?’ she sobbed. He understood the question involved in that one broken word, hardly audible for the sobs that shook his wife’s frame.