This was the climax. Miss Bettina Davenal was very wroth; wroth however, more in sorrow than in anger. In vain she strove to sift the affair to the bottom; Mark baffled her questions, baffled her indignant curiosity, and--it must be confessed--his wife helped him. She--Miss Bettina--turned away in the midst of the storm. She took up her black gloves, the only article of attire that she had removed, and drew them on her trembling hands. In the shaking of the hands alone did Bettina Davenal ever betray emotion: those firm, white, rather bony hands, usually so still and self-possessed. "Marcus Cray, as surely as that you are standing now before me, you will rue this work if you carry it out. When that day shall come, I beg you--I beg _you_, Caroline--to remember that I warned you of it." She passed out without another word, and stalked down the lighted street, uncomfortably upright, Neal behind her with his ginger tread. CHAPTER XXXVI. IS MARK IN HIS SENSES? Midway between the Abbey and her own home--it was in the corner just before coining to the market-place--Miss Davenal encountered Mr. Oswald Cray. "Is Mark in his senses?" was her abrupt greeting to him, as he lifted his hat. "What is the matter with him?--What is he doing?" asked Oswald, all in wonder. Miss Davenal paused. Either she did not hear the question or she took time to recover herself to reply to it. Her face was very pale, her cold grey eyes glittered like steel in the lamplight. "My poor brother has died young, and left this valuable practice in Mark's hands. There are not many like unto it. The house is ready to be offered to him: altogether, the career spreading out before him is a fine one. And he is talking of throwing it up. He is going to fling it from him as a child flings a pebble away into the sea. He says he shall quit Hallingham." "Quit Hallingham!" repeated Oswald Cray, the last words of what she said alone making their full impression on him in his bewildered surprise. "Mark says he shall quit Hallingham?" "He has some wild-goose scheme in his head of setting up in practice in London," said Miss Davenal, speaking in accordance with the notion she had erroneously assumed. "It is something he is about to purchase. He is going to purchase it with that money of Caroline's. But he has as surely lost his senses as that we are here." "I cannot understand it," said Oswald. "No man in his senses would abandon such a practice as this." "Just so. But I tell you he is not in his senses: he cannot be. I do not understand it any more than you. Perhaps you will see him?" "I will. I am going there now. I have been calling at your house, Miss Davenal. Now that I have met you, will you let me express my deep sympathy in your sorrow for the loss you have sustained."