“Let one single piece of disrespect be shown to this lady, and you and your wife are dismissed from my service instantly.” Jeffray found Dick Wilson sitting smoking at the open window of the library with his feet resting on the sill. He dropped his fat calves when Richard entered, and looked at him a little uneasily over his shoulder. Both men remembered the night of the Hardacre ball, when Wilson had confessed the truth of his old love affair with Miss Jilian. Jeffray felt that he could trust the painter, and he was in the spirit to treat him as a friend. Drawing up a chair beside Dick Wilson’s, he sat himself down before the open window. “You saw the girl on the terrace, Dick?” he asked. Wilson turned restlessly in his chair, his chin sunk upon his shabby green waistcoat. “I did,” he said, quietly. “Do you remember where you saw her before?” The painter shook his head and frowned as though mystified. “You remember the day we drove to Thorney Chapel?” Wilson cocked one shrewd blue eye at Jeffray, and removed his pipe-stem from between his lips. “You have set me thinking, sir,” he said, suddenly. “The girl on the terrace—” “And the rebellious bride—” “You realize the identity.” Simply and with no choosing of words, no rounding of sentences, Jeffray told Wilson the tale of Bess of the Woods, how she had been forced to marry Dan, and of the mystery that appeared to surround her birth. The painter sat hunched up in his chair, sucking at his pipe, and blowing out clouds of smoke. His rugged face was grave and sympathetically attentive; he grunted expressively from time to time, watching Jeffray with his keen and humorous blue eyes. The lad had developed, strengthened marvellously in these few weeks. Wilson had not yet escaped from the astonishment with which he had watched Lot Hardacre go down before Jeffray’s rapid passes. There was a short silence at the end of Jeffray’s confessional. Wilson sat motionless in his chair, pulling at his pipe and staring out of the window. “Well, sir, well?” he said at last. Jeffray sprang up and began to pace the room. The telling of Bess’s story seemed to have rendered the past more vivid and real to him, the passion of the present more flowing and tumultuous. “You are wondering what I am going to do?” he asked. “Exactly, sir, exactly,” said Wilson, bluntly, yet without cynicism. Jeffray stayed his striding from wall to wall, and stood with one hand gripping the back of the painter’s chair. “The woman’s life is in danger,” he said. Wilson nodded reflectively. “Her husband has to be considered. She shall not go back to him.” Dick Wilson swung himself up out of his chair, and stood staring at Jeffray with a frown upon his face. The two men looked each other in the eyes without flinching. “Doubtless you think me mad, Dick,” said Jeffray, quietly.