Presently from the same door which had seen Eliza Daunt depart, a woman cautiously emerged. She was in dark clothes, closely veiled. With noiseless step, she passed round the back of the house, pausing a moment to look at the side door on the north side which had been lately strengthened by Sir Wilfrid's orders. Then she gained the shelter of the close-grown shrubbery, and turning round she stood a few seconds motionless, gazing at the house. In spite of her quiet movements, she was trembling from head to foot--with excitement, not fear. "It's beautiful," she was saying to herself--"and precious--and I've destroyed it." Then--with a fierce leap in the blood--"_Beauty_! And what about the beauty that men destroy? Let them _pay_!" But as she stood there a sudden disabling storm of thought--misgiving--argument--swept through her brain. She seemed to hear on all sides voices in the air--the voices of friends and foes, of applause and execration--Delia's voice among them! And at the mere imagination of it, a shiver of anger ran through her. She thought of Delia now, only as of one who had deserted and disobeyed. But with the illusion of the ear, there came also an illusion of vision. The months of her recent life rose before her, in one hurrying spectacle of scenes and faces, and the spectacle aroused in her but one idea--one sickening impression--of crushing and superhuman effort. What labour!--what toil! She shuddered under it. Then, suddenly, her mind ran back to the early years before, beyond, the days of "war"--sordid, unceasing war--when there had been time to love, to weep, to pity, to enjoy; before wrath breeding wrath, and violence begetting violence, had driven out the Spirits of Tenderness and Hope. She seemed to see, to feel them--the sad Exiles!--fleeing along desert ways; and her bitter heart cried out to them--for the only--the last time. For in the great names of Love and Justice, she had let Hate loose within her, and like the lion-cub nurtured in the house, it had grown to be the soul's master and gaoler; a "doom" holding the citadels of life, and working itself out to the appointed end. But the tumult in which she stood began to unnerve her. By a last exercise of will she was able to pull herself together. Rapidly, as one well used to them, she made her way through the shrubbery paths; round the walled garden, and behind the gardeners' cottages. She heard the children in Mrs. Cresson's cottage as she passed, Lily still fretfully crying, and the old woman's voice scolding. Poor children!--they would be horribly frightened--but nothing worse.