The evening wore on. She sat down alone to the inevitable dinner and forced herself to eat. Once she caught Jane looking at her curiously. The details of the great trial’s sensational finish had reached Sunnington and were the theme of the servants’ hall. She read amused speculation and virtuous approbation, subtly mingled, in the girl’s glance. She flushed miserably, in spite of effort, and her throat contracted at the morsel she was about to swallow. Perhaps her servants would give her notice. The ironical pettiness of the thought faintly amused her and restored self-composure. The meal over, she returned to the smoking-room fire and nursed her heart-ache till bedtime. Hugh’s letter, often re-read, awakened a desire for his companionship, vague and scarcely formulated as an idea. Yet she would have shrunk in strange terror at his approach. Womanlike, she longed for a tender word or gentle touch, and strove to materialise it out of Hugh’s letter. And she was conscious of a little disappointment, so little that she would not admit it to her reason, in the joint address. Her reason admired the delicacy with which Hugh had conveyed his appreciation of their combined purpose, but her woman’s instinct felt the individual lack. Ever so subtle an acknowledgment of her separate action would have been balm to the bruised spirit. She slept fitfully, was up betimes, disregarding a racking headache. Gerard would come. She would have speech with him, learn the unimagined worst. No letter from him. Her pile of correspondence, envelopes briefly surveyed, remained unopened. She had not the heart to read letters. All her throbbing thoughts were Gerard’s. He was deeply angered. She would humble herself. Yet human certainty had never been so radiantly absolute as hers had been in the oneness of their sacrifice, when she had offered up his honour and her virtue. She could come to no conclusion. For an hour she stood at the dining-room window, which looked upon the little circular drive in front of the house, watching for her husband’s arrival. Her every fibre yearned and dreaded. At last he appeared, swung open the gate and strode in with a quick glance at the pale face behind the window. Irene’s hand flew to her heart. She stepped back, pierced by the glance, and waited. In another moment Gerard was in the room. He clapped his hat on the table and advanced a pace or two, fixing her with his shifty blue eyes. “Now, let us have it out at once. What the devil have you got to say for yourself?” The look, the tone, the insult dashed upon her like a douche of icy water upon an hysterical girl. She drew herself up, quivering, with a flash in her eyes. “You are forgetting yourself, Gerard.” Yet an instant afterwards she softened and humbled herself as a woman does towards the man she has been yearning for. She went to him with outstretched arms, pleading in her face. “Forgive me, dear! Forgive me!” He thrust her away, rather roughly.