They were standing in the darkness of a tree. He put his arms about her waist and lifted her into an open space where the moonlight shone bright and clear and there were no shadows. "Here," he said, and he kissed her on the lips. She thrust her head back, her face uplifted to the skies, her eyes closed. "Oh, Dick," she murmured, "I meant that this should never be. Even now--you shall forget it." "No--I couldn't." "So one says. But--oh, it would be your ruin." She started away from him. "Listen!" "Yes," he answered. She stood confronting him desperately a yard or so away, her bosom heaving, her face wet with her tears. Dick Hazlewood did not stir. Stella's lips moved as though she were speaking but no words were audible, and it seemed that her strength left her. She came suddenly forward, groping with her hands like a blind person. "Oh, my dear," she said as he caught them. They went on again together. She spoke of his father, of the talk of the countryside. But he had an argument for each of hers. "Be brave for just a little, Stella. Once we are married there will be no trouble," and with his arms about her she was eager to believe. Stella Ballantyne sat late that night in the armchair in her bedroom, her eyes fixed upon the empty grate, in a turmoil of emotion. She grew cold and shivered. A loud noise of birds suddenly burst through the open window. She went to it. The morning had come. She looked across the meadow to the silent house of Little Beeding in the grey broadening light. All the blinds were down. Were they all asleep or did one watch like her? She came back to the fireplace. In the grate some torn fragments of a letter caught her eyes. She stooped and picked them up. They were fragments of the letter of regret which she had written earlier that evening. "I should have sent it," she whispered. "I should not have gone. I should have sent the letter." But the regret was vain. She had gone. Her maid found her in the morning lying upon her bed in a deep sleep and still wearing the dress in which she had gone out. CHAPTER XVII TROUBLE FOR MR. HAZLEWOOD When Dick and Stella walked along the drive to the lane Harold Hazlewood, who was radiant at the success of his dinner-party, turned to Robert Pettifer in the hall. "Have a whisky-and-soda, Robert, before you go," he said. He led the way back into the library. Behind him walked the Pettifers, Robert ill-at-ease and wishing himself a hundred miles away, Margaret Pettifer boiling for battle. Hazlewood himself dropped into an arm-chair. "I am very glad that you came to-night, Margaret," he said boldly. "You have seen for yourself." "Yes, I have," she replied. "Harold, there have been moments this evening when I could have screamed." Robert Pettifer hurriedly turned towards the table in the far corner of the room where the tray with the decanters and the syphons had been placed.