The Countess Lavinia was silent, wearily struggling with tumultuous sobs that hurt her breast. She clasped her hands over her heart and looked on the ground. The maid leant forward. A stray ray of moonlight pierced the gently waving foliage, and showed her delicate, sharp face and the curling locks of bright gold hair that escaped from under her white muslin cap. "Think a little, my lady, of the position you have and the power it gives you over both of them. What good would you do by running away?" "Disgrace him, at least," came heavily from the Countess Lavinia. "And yourself more, my lady. What would they say--'who was she but a perked-up Miss that lost her head?' Great ladies do not run away. And how would Mr. Hilton receive you?" "But for him I had never married this man," broke out the Countess desperately. "No, I vow it! But did he not threaten to shut me up in Bedlam? _You_ heard him tell me my grandmother had died mad, and so his daughter should if she were not Lady Lyndwood!" "And ye were resigned," returned the maid quickly. "I was cowed, but I would have married Marius. Yes, last spring I would have married him, so great a fool was I, and let the money go. The money! What use is it to me? What pleasure have I in seeing it go to pay _his_ debts, to procure luxuries for _his_ mother, to keep up the estate he mocks me with, to minister to his extravagance? My money, my father's money! And my amusement must be to see it spent on foreign Delilahs and gipsy actresses who laugh at me!" She stopped, gasping for breath. The maid eyed her keenly, and offered no reply. "Let us walk on!" cried the Countess. "I cannot stand still." She moved forward through the trees, and Honoria followed. For a while there was no speech between them, and the snapping of branches and crushing back of leaves was distinctly heard. The Countess pushed back the damp dark curls from her brow and burst into words again. "Am I not a good woman?" she exclaimed. "Am I not as fair and as witty as that cousin of his? Why should they turn their backs on me? I wot that among the women he has courted were some not so well born as I." "But he did not marry one of them," returned Honoria in her quiet, insinuating voice, "and that is your strength, my lady. You do not hold him by the bonds of fancy, or the bonds of liking, or bonds of fashion, but by the bonds of the law, and that is the most lasting thing, my lady." They had come out on to a fair lawn that sloped to a lake, and the sky showed vast above them. Through the dark trees ran the constant tripping murmur of the wind, and the long grass bent towards the water when the breeze strengthened. The moon was almost overhead and floated in a faint golden haze. The Countess turned and looked back at the house, impassive and fine in the veiled silver light.