“Oh, no, you can take my word for that. It concerns Mr. Rotherfield, and it is something which he can’t afford to have known. But it concerns nobody but him. Now please let me go. I don’t want Lady Sarah to think that we are talking about her.” Sir Robert sighed. The discovery of his wife’s intention to run away from her home seemed to Rhoda to have affected him very little. She had been prepared for a much stronger display of emotion when he heard the truth. But the fact was that Lady Sarah’s conduct had given him so much anxiety of late, and that, in particular, her over-excitement during the past few days had been so marked, that he could not feel much astonishment when he learned what the attempt was to which it had been leading. Nevertheless he was looking very grave, very sad, and very deeply humiliated as Rhoda briefly bade him good-night and went out. She passed Lady Sarah’s door in fear and trembling, dreading that the lady would come out and upbraid her for “conspiring” with Sir Robert against her. But she reached her own room in safety, and without molestation. Next morning Lady Sarah did not come down to breakfast, and the first anxious thought in Rhoda’s mind was that she had carried out her plan of elopement after all. But before the morning was half over the mistress of the house glided into the morning-room, looking very cold, hard, and resentful, very hollow about the eyes and listless of manner, the mere wreck of the brilliant woman she had been within the past week. She and Rhoda met with considerable reserve on both sides, as was inevitable. Gone was all kindness on Lady Sarah’s part; even her boy’s voice addressing her caused no relaxation of her features. She treated him as an interruption, and frowned as she crossed the room at his call. And Rhoda’s heart throbbed painfully when she remembered the touching way in which the beauty had spoken to the child on the previous night; when she had shown him a momentary tenderness which was real. It had only been the flicker of a love which absence would soon have extinguished altogether. The boy looked chilled and disappointed. Remembering the sweetness of her look and touch on the previous night he had been ready with a smile for her, and her coldness pained him and struck him into silence. There was a painful pause, as they all heard the sound of the steps of Sir Robert in the hall outside. But when he came in, they were all struck by the change in his manner. Instead of being slow and stately, he was brisk and alert. He did not smile as he bade them all good-morning, and even when he stooped to kiss his son, his face was stern and set. He spoke with a most unusual tone of command as he turned to his wife and said: “Sarah, I have settled some of the details of our journey abroad already. I want you to go to town with me to-day to buy anything you may want, and to help me as to any details which I may have forgotten.” “I don’t want to go abroad,” she said sullenly.