He went out of the room in a rage, and downstairs into the street, going straight to his work. It is a terrible moment when the first bitter quarrel takes place, and when hatred, even if it be hatred for the moment only first finds expression. That moment can never be recalled! Is it ever really forgotten, or really forgiven? Some of us can call to mind a word, just one word, spoken, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago, which rings in our ears even to-day as distinctly as when it was uttered, and forces the blood into the head as it did then. When Zachariah returned that night he and his wife spoke to each other as if nothing had happened, but they spoke only about indifferent things. The next day Mrs. Coleman wondered whether, after all, he would repent; but the evening came and she waited and waited in vain. The poor woman for hours and hours had thought one thought and one thought only, until at last she could bear it no longer. At about eight o’clock she rose, put on her cloak, and went out of doors. She made straight for Caillaud’s house. It was cold, and the sky was clear at intervals, with masses of clouds sweeping over the nearly full moon. What she was to do when she got to Caillaud’s had not entered her head. She came to the door and stopped. It had just begun to rain heavily. The sitting-room was on the ground-floor, abutting on the pavement. The blind was drawn down, but not closely, and she could see inside. Caillaud, Pauline, and Zachariah were there, but not the Major. Caillaud was sitting by the fireside; her husband and Pauline were talking earnestly across the table. Apparently both of them were much interested, and his face was lighted up as she never saw it when he was with her. She was fascinated, and could not move. It was a dull lonely street and nobody was to be seen that wet night. She had no protection from the weather but her cloak, and in ten minutes, as the rain came down more heavily, she was wet through and shivering from head to foot—she who was usually so careful, so precise, so singularly averse from anything like disorder. Still she watched—watched every movement of those two—every smile, every gesture; and when Caillaud went out of the room, perhaps to fetch something, she watched with increasing and self-forgetting intensity. She had not heard footsteps approaching. The wind had risen; the storm was ever fiercer and fiercer, and the feverish energy which poured itself into her eyes had drained and deadened every other sense. “Well, my good woman, what do you want?” She turned with a start, and it was the Major! “Mrs. Coleman! Good God! what are you doing here? You are soaked. Why don’t you come in?” “Oh no, Major Maitland indeed I cannot. I—I had been out, and I had just stopped a moment. I didn’t know it was going to rain.” “But I say you are dripping. Come in and see your husband; he will go with you.”