"A distance sufficient to protect me from your rudeness would certainly be an advantage." "Would it, indeed? You really think so, do you? Well, if you think so, it shall be so." "Very well." She spoke with a calmness that was perfectly exasperating, and John Stanburne's brain was too much overwrought by the terrible trial of that day for him to bear things with any patience. He was half insane temporarily; he could not bear to see that calm little woman sitting there, with her jarring self-control. "I say, Lady Helena, if you mean to go to old Adisham's, the sooner you go the better. All this house is crumbling over our heads as if it were rotten." Lady Helena rose quietly from her seat, took up her work, and walked towards the door. Just as she was opening it, she turned towards the Colonel, and pronounced with the clearest possible articulation the following sentences:-- "You will please remember, Colonel Stanburne, that it was you who turned me out of your house, and the sort of language you used in doing so. _I_ shall always remember it." Then the door closed quietly upon her--the great heavy door, slowly moving on its smooth hinges. CHAPTER IV. ALONE. It happened that the hall-door was open, as it usually was in the fine weather, and John Stanburne, without knowing it, went out upon the lawn. The balmy evening air, fragrant from the sweet breath of innumerable flowers, caressed his hot flushed face. He became gradually calmer as he walked in a purposeless way about the garden, and, looking at his mansion from many a different point of view, began to feel a strange, dreamy, independent enjoyment of its beauty, as if he had been some tourist or visitor for whom the name of Wenderholme had no painful associations. Then he passed out into the park, down the rich dark avenues whose massive foliage made a premature night, and wandered farther and farther, till, by pure accident, he came upon the carriage-drive. A man whose mind is quite absent, and who is wandering without purpose, will, when he comes upon a road, infallibly follow it in one direction or another, not merely because it is plain before the feet, but from a deep instinct in our being which impels us to prefer some human guidance to the wilderness of nature. It happened that the Colonel went in the direction which led him away from the house, perhaps because the road sloped invitingly that way. Suddenly he heard a noise behind him, and had barely time to get out of the way when a carriage dashed passed him at full speed, with two great glittering lamps. He caught no glimpse of its occupant, but he knew the carriage--Lady Helena's. For a few seconds he stood immovable. Then, bounding forward, he cried aloud, "Helena! Helena!" and again and again, "Helena!"