There was silence. When he had got to the end, he raised his heavy lids and looked at her. Her face was now set, almost fierce. The dove-like sweetness of her changeful eyes was gone. They showed like a stormy sea. "You want to go?" he almost whispered. She laughed bitterly. That she, Virginia the martyr, could laugh like that! He reeled mentally with this fresh surprise of womanhood. "_Want to go?_ I _am_ going," she said deliberately, her huskiness giving almost the effect of hissing. "I have borne enough. Now I don't care what happens. I am going to Pansy. If you try to prevent me, I will scream and rouse the house. I will call upon your butler to protect me; I will say you are mad, as I believe you are! But somehow I will go to her. Then, afterwards, when I come back, you may do as you like. You may cut me to pieces with a knife, and I won't complain! But now I am rebel! Now you can't keep me! I am not afraid of you any more!" There were a thousand things to say, each more hopeless, each more futile than the other. He could not say them. In profound humiliation he took what she gave him, he accepted it all. A long moment ticked past after her passionate challenge. Then he spoke humbly. "Virginia--would it console you to go--to-night?" She staggered on her feet as if his words overthrew her; then again she laughed in derision. "To-night? Ah, but, of course, you are mocking!" "As God hears me, I am not. There is an express which stops at Derby at nine o'clock. You have an hour in which to pack and eat some dinner. Grover must go with you--you will want her when you get to London. I will call her now." He spoke with his watch in his hand. Virgie caught her breath. She looked at him uncertainly.... Once, as a small child, during a visit to London, her father had taken her with him upon a visit to the Law Courts. They had been in court when sentence was passed upon a prisoner. She had completely forgotten the crime and what its punishment was to be; but as she looked at her husband, she recalled the expression of the prisoner in the dock, whose doom had just been pronounced. "For the first time--I thank you," she muttered chokingly. Gaunt went to the door. With his hand upon the handle, he turned back. "Promise me that you will now control yourself," he said frigidly. "No more wild weeping. You have cried yourself hoarse." "I promise," she said in answer, her eyes upon him, her thoughts already far away in the nursing home with Pansy. He went out, and she heard him speaking to Grover in the passage. * * * * * An hour later, having forced herself to eat something, and having accomplished her packing, she came down into the hall, equipped for her journey. The new motor, which had arrived only two days before, stood at the door in charge of a chauffeur, who was to stay a month and train Ransom, the coachman, to drive. Gaunt awaited her in the hall, his hat in his hand. Her face changed.