‘Husband, you are too cruel--groundless accusations--vilest suspicions--I will not, I cannot bear this persecution any longer. I will leave you this very night.’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘your lover is waiting for you. It was his carriage that passed us on the road--and _you_ know it.’ ‘I do,’ she exclaimed with flashing eyes, ‘and I thank God that I have a friend and defender so near.’ And then she left him, to go to her own room as he fancied. He took her talk of flight as an empty threat. She had threatened him in this same way more than once in her passion. Their quarrel to-night had been a little more violent than usual. That was all. His jealousy had been aroused by the sight of a face he hated, looking out of a travelling carriage that whirled by them in a cloud of white dust on the sunny mountain road. He had given free rein to his violence afterwards, when they were alone at the inn--and had spoken words that no woman could forgive or forget. Late that night he found her gone, and on inquiry discovered that a carriage had been seen waiting not far from the inn, and a lady, muffled in a mantle, had been seen to enter it. He heard this some hours after the event. He had no clue to assist him in discovering the way the carriage had taken, but he concluded that it had gone on to Citta di Castello. He had no doubt as to the face he had seen looking out of the window, athwart that blinding cloud of dust, as the bells jingled on the ragged old harness, and the driver lashed his jaded horses. The outer door of the Water House shut with a prolonged reverberation, like the door of an empty church. Antonio was gone. Christian Harefield sank down in his accustomed seat, and sat staring at the fire, with hollow eyes, his arms hanging loosely across the oaken arms of the chair, his long thin hands falling idly, his lips moving faintly, now and then, but making no sound, as if repeating dumbly some conversation of the past--the ghosts of words long dead. Those haggard eyes, which seemed to be staring at the red logs, were indeed looking along the corridor of slow dull years to that one point in the past when life was fresh and vivid, and all this earth flushed with colour and alive with light. He was thinking of the evening when he first saw the girl who was afterwards his wife.