He asked a good many questions Ffrench did not quite understand. He seemed in a questioning humor and went over the ground step by step. He asked what the mob had said and done and even how they had looked. "It's a bad lookout for Murdoch," he said. "They'll have a spite again' him. They're lyin' quiet a bit now, because it's safest, but they'll carry their spite." At Ffrench's invitation he went up to the house with him to dinner. As they passed into the grounds, Murdoch passed out. He was walking quickly and scarcely seemed to see them until Ffrench spoke. "It's a queer time of day for him to be here," said Haworth, when he was gone. Ffrench's reply held a touch of embarrassment. "He is not usually here so early," he said. "He has probably been doing some little errand for Rachel." The truth was that he had been with her for an hour, and that, on seeing Haworth coming down the road with her father, she had sent him away. "I want to be alone when he comes," she had said. And when Murdoch said "Why?" she had answered, "Because it will be easier." When they came in, she was sitting with the right side of her face toward them. They could see nothing of the mark upon her left temple. It was not a large mark nor a disfiguring one, but there were traces of its presence in her pallor. She did not rise, and would have kept this side of her face out of view, but Haworth came and took his seat before her. It would not have been easy for her to move or change her position--and he looked directly at the significant little bruise. His glance turned upon it again and again as he talked to her or her father; if it wandered off it came back and rested there. During dinner she felt that, place herself as she would, in a few seconds she would be conscious again that he had baffled her. For the first time in his experience, it was he who had the advantage. But when they returned to the parlor she held herself in check. She placed herself opposite to him and turned her face toward him, and let him look without flinching. It was as if suddenly she wished that he should see, and had a secret defiant reason for the wish. It seemed a long evening, but she did not lose an inch of ground after this. When he was going away she rose and stood before him. Her father had gone to the other end of the room, and was fussing unnecessarily over some memoranda. As they waited together, Haworth took his last look at the mark upon her temple. "If it had been _me_ you wore it for," he said, "I'd have had my hands on the throat of the chap that did it before now. It _wasn't_ me, but I'll find him and pay him for it yet, by George!" She had no time to answer him. Her father came toward them with the papers in his hands. Haworth listened to his wordy explanation without moving a line of his face. He did not hear it, and Ffrench was dimly aware of the fact. About half an hour after, the door of the bar-parlor of the "Who'd ha' Thowt it" was flung open.