Jethro was looking puzzled--a little annoyed, too. Her unequal moods of late vexed him. He was a short-tempered man, given to fits of silence and _brusquerie_, just as his father had been. Men in the country are often so; she had noticed that young Jim Jayne snubbed Annie. In towns a man goes out and blows off his temper--at his club or a music-hall; in the country he vents it on his women. “Doesn’t matter? That sounds strange from you, Pamela.” She laughed. The steady look in her eyes, the lambent light on her face, struck him. She seemed swept, dominated by a sudden fierce, irrevocable decision. The newspaper, wide open at the page-advertisement of the new company, was on her knees. She put her finger under Edred’s name and showed it to him. “Umph! Well, he has never written a line since he went away--didn’t even send the telegram. Still, I’m glad he’s getting on. Looks like business, doesn’t it?” He read the name and address in a rather awe-struck way. “There seems to be money in that. How much capital, do they say? He hasn’t been long in making his fortune. Perhaps he’ll pay me back the two hundred. It was understood between us to be only a loan--if he succeeded. What are the Chinese beggars doing at----” He lifted the paper to turn it. She drew it away. “Never mind the Chinese. You will have time--your whole life--for them.” “My whole life!” He laughed. “By Jove! we mean to settle them in less than a month--judging by the telegrams. Just let me have a look at the summary, dear.” “But I want to speak to you.” “You have spoken. It was to tell me about Edred, wasn’t it?” “About Edred--yes.” “You haven’t had a letter from him? You don’t know anything but that?” He pointed to the paper. She shook her head. “I’ve never had a letter from him since he left; but this,” she put her finger on the words, “has decided me. The mere look of the letters put together to form _him_ was enough. Can’t you guess, Jethro? You are not stupid.” “Guess!” An angry darkness suddenly overspread his face. “Guess what?” “You don’t guess. You only suspect--and suspicion never decides a woman’s fate. I shall have to tell you.” She seemed to pull herself together, giving a last fierce look of affection round the room and out of the window, at the flowers and the fripperies that she was so fond of. Then she said coldly--with the unerring cold, callousness of steel: