“Not talking? How do you know? You could hardly hear them from the garden!” “No; but I could see. HE was sitting at my desk, with his face in his hands. SHE was standing in the window, looking away from him...” He waited, as if for Sophy Viner’s answer; but still she neither stirred nor spoke. “That was the first time,” he went on; “and the second was the next morning in the park. It was natural enough, their meeting there. Sophy had gone out with Effie, and Effie ran back to look for me. She told me she’d left Sophy and Darrow in the path that leads to the river, and presently we saw them ahead of us. They didn’t see us at first, because they were standing looking at each other; and this time they were not speaking either. We came up close before they heard us, and all that time they never spoke, or stopped looking at each other. After that I began to wonder; and so I watched them.” “Oh, Owen!” “Oh, I only had to wait. Yesterday, when I motored you and the doctor back from the lodge, I saw Sophy coming out of the spring-house. I supposed she’d taken shelter from the rain, and when you got out of the motor I strolled back down the avenue to meet her. But she’d disappeared--she must have taken a short cut and come into the house by the side door. I don’t know why I went on to the spring-house; I suppose it was what you’d call spying. I went up the steps and found the room empty; but two chairs had been moved out from the wall and were standing near the table; and one of the Chinese screens that lie on it had dropped to the floor.” Anna sounded a faint note of irony. “Really? Sophy’d gone there for shelter, and she dropped a screen and moved a chair?” “I said two chairs----” “Two? What damning evidence--of I don’t know what!” “Simply of the fact that Darrow’d been there with her. As I looked out of the window I saw him close by, walking away. He must have turned the corner of the spring-house just as I got to the door.” There was another silence, during which Anna paused, not only to collect her own words but to wait for Sophy Viner’s; then, as the girl made no sign, she turned to her. “I’ve absolutely nothing to say to all this; but perhaps you’d like me to wait and hear your answer?” Sophy raised her head with a quick flash of colour. “I’ve no answer either--except that Owen must be mad.” In the interval since she had last spoken she seemed to have regained her self-control, and her voice rang clear, with a cold edge of anger. Anna looked at her step-son. He had grown extremely pale, and his hand fell from the door with a discouraged gesture. “That’s all then? You won’t give me any reason?” “I didn’t suppose it was necessary to give you or any one else a reason for talking with a friend of Mrs. Leath’s under Mrs. Leath’s own roof.” Owen hardly seemed to feel the retort: he kept his dogged stare on her face.