"A life for a life," repeated Christabel, her lips moving dumbly, her heart throbbing heavily, as if it were beating out those awful words. "A life for a life--the old law--the law of justice--God's own sentence against murder. The law could not touch this murderer--but there was one way by which that cruel deed might be punished, and I found it." The slow silent hours wore on. Christabel left the window, shivering with cold, though cheeks, brow, and lips were burning. She walked up and down the room for a long while, till the very atmosphere of the room, nay, of the house itself, seemed unendurable. She felt as if she were being suffocated, and this sense of oppression became so strong that she was sorely tempted to shriek aloud, to call upon some one for rescue from that stifling vault. The feeling grew to such intensity that she flung on her hat and cloak, and went quickly downstairs to a lobby-door that opened into the garden, a little door which she had unbolted many a night after the servants had locked up the house, in order to steal out in the moonlight and among the dewy flowers, and across the dewy turf to those shrubbery walks which had such a mysterious look--half in light and half in shadow. She closed the door behind her, and stood with the night wind blowing round her, looking up at the sky; clouds were drifting across the starry dome, and the moon, like a storm-beaten boat, seemed to be hurrying through them. The cold wind revived her, and she began to breathe more freely. "I think I was going mad just now," she said to herself. And then she thought she would go out upon the hills, and down to the churchyard in the valley. On this night, of all nights, she would visit Angus Hamleigh's grave. It was long since she had seen the spot where he lay--since her return from Switzerland she had not once entered a church. Jessie had remonstrated with her gravely and urgently--but without eliciting any explanation of this falling off in one who had been hitherto so steadfastly devout. "I don't feel inclined to go to church, Jessie," she said, coolly; "there is no use in discussing my feelings. I don't feel fit for church; and I am not going in order to gratify your idea of what is conventional and correct." "I am not thinking of this in its conventional aspect--I have always made light of conventionalities--but things must be in a bad way with you, Christabel, when you do not feel fit for church." "Things are in a bad way with me," answered Christabel, with a dogged moodiness which was insurmountable. "I never said they were good." This surrender of old pious habits had given Jessie more uneasiness than any other fact in Christabel's life. Her flirtation with the Baron must needs be meaningless frivolity, Jessie had thought; since it seemed hardly within the limits of possibility that a refined and pure-minded woman could have any real _penchant_ for that showy adventurer; but this persistent avoidance of church meant mischief.