But Rhoda Bowden knew nothing of these facts. It was not until night, when Margaret returned and David also came home, that she heard the truth from her sister-in-law. And her inclination was to disbelieve at least a part of it. *CHAPTER VI* *VIRGO--LIBRA* A moon at full rolled hugely up over the Moor edge, outlined a black peat wall and by chance made a brilliant background for an atom of life that was there. Here Rhoda’s kitten rested on an August night after great hunting of moths; and the planet threw a golden frame around it. Rhoda herself, sitting alone at hand in the presence of her mistress, the moon, perceived this accidental conjunction and noticed her little pet dark against the immensity of the bright dead world now ascending. Rhoda sat with her hands folded in her lap and watched the red-gold rise. The moon and the kitten, for some subtle reason, alike comforted her. One rose clear of the horizon, and the other vanished. The work of the first was to diffuse a warm and wondrous stain upon the cloudless air; to permeate the earth’s atmosphere with fleeting radiance and then, swimming upwards, to cool the passing heat of ruddy colour she had created and to supersede this glow with a pale rain of silver-grey light. It poured down into the silence and spread pools and patches of misty pearl upon the ebony of the waste. The work of the second was to come to Rhoda, stick up its little tail, pad in her lap, purr with infant heartiness, and, lifting its nose, mirror the moon in a pair of phosphorescent green eyes. So from both she won good and had sense to see that the stars in heaven and the beasts of earth might each minister after their fashion to such a soul as hers. They soothed her; but they did not advance her reflections or help to solve the gathering difficulties that conscience cast into her path. She was troubled and knew not where to turn. She stated the situation again and again to herself, but no light fell upon the picture from anywhere. Her belief was that her brother’s wife saw far too much of another man. That the man in question wanted to marry Rhoda herself was an added complication; and from that fact, she judged that Margaret must be fonder of Bartley Crocker than he could be of her. Her mind was not constituted to weigh very subtly the shades and half shades of this situation, or appraise the extent of its danger. She concerned herself with David and busied her spirit to consider only her duty towards him. Indifference toward Margaret of late tightened into dislike. Secretly she had always felt impatient with the other’s softness; but since that softness began to lead David’s wife astray, she became alarmed and angered. She retraced the general attitude of her brother and could see nothing in it at all unreasonable. He was very busy, very hard-working, very ambitious. He