But it was not she on whom his spite was to fall. Such deeds bring retribution. Only the horse--the glossy, graceful, spirited animal, turning his lustrous confiding eyes toward the house as the door opened, whinnying a low joyous welcome, anticipative of the breezy gallop--received the bullet just below the ear. It was then and afterward like the distraught agony of a confused dream. She heard her own screams as if they had been uttered by another; she saw the great bulk of the horse lying in the road, struggling frightfully, futilely, whether with conscious pain or merely the last reserves of muscular energy she did not know; she noted the gathering crowd, dismayed, bewildered, angry; she knew that her husband had hastily galloped off, a trifle out of countenance because of certain threats of some brawny Irish railroad hands going home with their dinner-pails who had seen the whole occurrence. Then Judge Roscoe had ridden up at last to accompany her as of old, thinking how pretty and pleased she would be on the new horse,--for equestrianism was the vaunt of the girls of that day and she had been a famous horsewoman,--and feeling a great pity because of her privations, and her cruel folly, and her unworthy husband. When he saw what had just occurred, he said instantly, "You must come home with me, Leonora; you are not safe." And she had answered, "Take me with you--quick--quick! So that I may never see that coward again." Thus she had left her husband forever. "Shall I draw up the blind?" asked Captain Baynell, seeing her fumble for her zephyr. "No, thank you; there is still light sufficient, I think. The days are growing longer." Again, in the silence of the quiet room, the spell of her reminiscences resumed its sway. She recalled the promises that had not sufficed; no explanations extenuated the facts; no lures could avail; her resolution was taken and held firm. She laughed when, with full confidence in her unshaken love for him, her husband appealed to her by their mutual devotion. She was simply enlightened. But she resented the satisfaction that Judge Roscoe and his wife obviously felt in the separation, and the knowledge of the secret triumph of all her friends who had opposed the match. She was embittered, humiliated, broken-spirited, yet she maintained throughout a mask of placidity to the world, inquisitive, pitying, ridiculing, as she knew it to be. The separation passed as temporary. She was making a visit to her former home. This feint had the more countenance when a sudden need for her presence arose. Her aunt fell ill and died, and soon there came tidings of the death of Clarence Roscoe's wife while he was far away in the Confederate army. The three little girls were all alone. "Bring them here, Uncle Gerald. I will take charge of them," Leonora had said. "Perhaps I can feel less dependent then."