After a few moments of this hesitation he rang the bell, told Sarah that he was going out, and left the house. The three women in the drawing-room upstairs, already nervous and overstrained from long suspense, all started when the reverberation of that closing door made itself heard. Lesley felt her mother's hand close on hers with a quick, convulsive pressure. She looked up. "He has gone out!" Lady Alice murmured, so that Lesley alone could hear. "He does not come--to _us_!" Lesley did not know what to say. She was surprised to find that her mother expected him to come. But then she was only Caspar Brooke's daughter and not his wife. Lady Alice lay back in her chair, closed her eyes and waited. She had once been a jealous woman: there were the seeds of jealousy in her still. She sat and wondered whether Caspar had gone for sympathy and comfort to any other woman. And after wondering this for half an hour it suddenly occurred to her mind with the vividness of a lightning flash that if things _were_ so--if her husband _had_ found sympathy elsewhere--it was her own fault. She had no right to accuse him, or to blame him, when she had left him for a dozen years. "I have no right to blame him, perhaps, but I have still a right to know," she said to herself. And then, disengaging her hand from Lesley's clinging fingers, she rose and went downstairs--down to the study which she had so seldom visited. She seated herself in Caspar's arm-chair, and prepared to wait there for his return. Surely he would not be long!--and then she would speak to him, and things should be made clear. Caspar's note had been written by Mrs. Romaine. It was quite formal, and merely contained a request that he would call on her at his earliest convenience. And he complied at once, as she had surmised that he would do. Her confidential maid opened the door to him, and conducted him to the drawing-room. It was dusk, and the blinds were drawn down. Oliver Trent's funeral had taken place the day before.