But one thing in his programme it was beyond Harry’s strength to carry out. He could not act; and, when he met his wife just before dinner, and would fain have concealed, under soft words and caressing manners, the passionate indignation which was raging in him, he was obliged to turn away from her brusquely after the very first words. She noticed his agitation; but it was as impossible as it was unnecessary to fathom all her husband’s caprices, and her own manner then and at dinner was exactly the same as usual. Stephen watched him as he glared at his wife; and, when dinner was over, he fastened himself on to Annie to prevent a conversation between her husband and her. This was not difficult; for Harry, for the first time during his wife’s stay at the Grange, had disregarded all her entreating looks, and excited himself so much with wine that she kept carefully out of his way when the gentlemen came into the drawing-room. Except for that incident and Harry’s consequent sullenness, the evening passed off as usual, until, at half-past ten, Annie and Lilian retired for the night. Then Harry, instead of joining his brothers in the billiard-room, sprung up from the corner where he had been sulking and watching for the last hour, snatched up a hat in the hall, and, without waiting to put on his overcoat, slipped out, without being seen by any one, into the garden. It was a snowy February night, and he shivered as, hot with wine and mad excitement, he first stepped into the keen air; but he strode down over the lawn toward the bottom of the garden, reckless as to the effects of the cold and wet on his not yet robust frame. He reached the lower gate; but, to his intense relief, there was no one there, no sound to be heard. He waited a few minutes, and a deep sense of joy, followed by the determination to transfer his revenge on to Stephen, who had played this trick upon him, had risen in his breast, when he heard the faint sound of wheels and hoofs over the soft snow, and saw through the falling flakes a close carriage coming slowly up from the direction of Beckham. It stopped at the gate. Harry held his breath; the carriage door opened, and a man in a thick great-coat stepped down into the snow. It was Colonel Richardson. Harry, who, on the approach of the carriage, had crept in among the leafless snow-covered trees and the tall evergreens of the shrubbery, uttered no sound; but his right hand went swiftly to his coat-pocket and drew out a revolver, which he thrust into the breast of his coat without again relaxing his hold of it.