She had received a brief note from him, pencilled on the train, and a clipping from a New York paper with the programme of the Boston meeting. He had missed her, he said, and would be glad to be home again. (There was a little sigh, she knew, that accompanied such a declaration as this, implying weariness of public cares and a longing for the peace worn warriors crave at their own firesides.) The clipping she placed on his dressing-table; the note she tossed into the fire contemptuously. She dressed before luncheon for the drive with Walsh, and found to her surprise that the thought of going with him had grown less hateful. Even if he had undertaken to watch her, it was rather interesting that one had to be watched. Her husband had sacrificed her on the altar of his own vanity without the slightest compunction. The dignity of life, the fine security and chivalrous protection which she had expected to gain by her marriage had faded into nothing. She put on her hat and coat and waited for Walsh at her sitting room window, and punctually at half-past two his cutter whirled smartly into the grounds and round to the porte cochère. She took account of his burly figure and his sturdy arms holding the taut reins over the spirited, graceful animal he drove. His cap, drawn low on his head, made him almost grotesque. She was about to run down, to save him the trouble of ringing, when the maid brought her an immediate delivery letter that had just been left at the door. She glanced at the superscription and clutched it in her gloved fingers for a moment before opening it, as though at truce with bad news. It was a letter of length in a woman’s hand, loose and scrawling as though by one distraught. Mrs. Craighill raised her veil and read; or rather she caught at the sentences which seemed to dart at her from the paper: