"I must ask you once more to remember that I will not have any scandal attaching to your name. Did not you see that that white mongrel Pratt was on your track? If I had not been there when he came in he would have drawn his own vile conclusions, and for once they would have been correct." "He could not think worse of me than you do," said the wife, half cowed, half defiant. "No, but he could say so, which I don't; or, what is more probable, he could use his knowledge to obtain a hold over you. He is a dangerous man. Don't put yourself in his power." "I don't want to, or in anybody's." "Then avoid scandal instead of courting it, and don't repeat the folly of this afternoon." * * * * * Captain Pratt did not remain long in the smoking-room. He had only a slight acquaintance with Hugh, which did not appear capable of expansion. Captain Pratt made a few efforts, proved its inelastic properties, and presently lounged out again. Hugh moved slowly to the window, and leaned his throbbing forehead against the stone mullion. He was still weak, and the encounter with Lady Newhaven had shaken him. "What did he mean?" he said to himself, bewildered and suspicious. "'Perhaps I should be staying at Westhope later on!' But, of course, I shall never go there again. He knows that as well as I do. What did he mean?" CHAPTER XXXI The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter--and the Bird is on the wing. --OMAR KHAYYAM. It was the third week of November. Winter, the destroyer, was late, but he had come at last. There was death in the air, a whisper of death stole across the empty fields and bare hill-side. The birds heard it and were silent. The November wind was hurrying round Westhope Abbey, shaking its bare trees. Lord Newhaven stood looking fixedly out eastward across the level land to the low hills beyond. He stood so long that the day died, and twilight began to rub out first the hills and then the long, white lines of flooded meadow and blurred pollard willows. Presently the river mist rose up to meet the coming darkness. In the east, low and lurid, a tawny moon crept up the livid sky. She made no moonlight on the gray earth. Lord Newhaven moved away from the window, where he had become a shadow among the shadows, and sat down in the dark at his writing-table. Presently he turned on the electric lamp at his elbow and took a letter out of his pocket. The circle of shaded light fell on his face as he read--the thin, grave face, with the steady, inscrutable eyes. He read the letter slowly, evidently not for the first time.