The inn doors were slowly drawing apart. He lifted his arms to help her down, held her a second between them to steady her, then, putting her gently aside, sprang into the saddle and forthwith spurred the mare to her heavy trot. And Diana, looking after them, saw rider and mount passing from her, black against the snow. He never turned his head. She stood, bewilderment in her mind, pain at her heart. “God-a-mercy, madam, ’tis you!” cried the familiar voice of her old servant in her ear. “In the Lord’s name, madam, where have you been?” old Geoffrey was tremblingly questioning. She started, looking round at him as one suddenly awakened. Was it all indeed a dream of the snow? she asked herself, as the sheltering doors of the Anchor, at Liphook, closed upon her. * * * * * The sudden spurt of old Bess the mare soon gave place to her usual jog. Through the silent snow she carried her rider back to the door of Farrant Chace. The rhythmic jingle of her bit, the monotonous muffled plunge of her hoofs, the wail of the wind over the down, seemed to point the wide stillness, even as the sparse black firs pointed the immense whiteness of the waste. Rockhurst stepped in again into the warmth of the parlour, snow sodden on his boots, hoar frost pricking his hair, and found Paul Farrant. * * * * * To the young man’s frenzied anxiety it seemed interminable nights that he had been thus waiting, waiting for release or doom; nights that he had paced the brown parlour from end to end; that he had stood shivering in the window recess, gazing out upon the white emptiness, straining his ears for a sound of life in the awful stillness. The uncertainty of Rockhurst’s moods, of his intentions, the mystery that had to-night surrounded his movements, added to the waiting misery. To what end had Rakehell set forth, at midnight through the snow, with the lady whom he had so cynically received? Was it a sudden whim of chivalrous courtesy? His scorching anger upon their last brief meeting might lead him to that preposterous conclusion—Knight Errant Rakehell, out through the snowdrifts on a farm mare for the sake of country virtue! (What tale might he not make of it for supper merriment at Whitehall!) Or Rakehell, jealous of his host’s fair looks and smooth cheek, carrying off elsewhere the prize of grace and beauty.… At such a point Farrant’s uneasy tread would lead him back to the hearth, to seek vain comfort by the embers, to fling fresh logs on the reddening pile. What was he to do if Rockhurst were to pass away from his road like this? Dare he, so long as those damning notes were in that pitiless hold, ever present himself within earshot of Court? * * * * *