Mary was sobbing, scarcely able to speak. “Oh, tell them to go back again--tell them to go back,” she cried. There was no way of satisfying her but this: the carriage turned slowly round, rolling like a ship at sea. The coachman was disgusted and unwilling. “What did she want now?” he said, telegraphing with uplifted hands and eyes to the surprised footman on Geoff’s horse. Lady Stanton was not a hard mistress like her stepdaughters, nor fantastical and unreasonable as they were. She took the carriage humbly when she could get it, and would consult this very coachman’s convenience before bringing him out, which no one else thought of doing. Nevertheless Lady Stanton had her character in the house, and human nature required that it should be kept up. She was the stepmother, the scapegoat. “What is she after now?” the coachman said. She got out of the carriage herself, trembling, to aid in the search, and the footman getting down, looked everywhere, even under the stones, and in the roadside hedges, but no one was there. When they resumed their way again, Mary lay back in her corner too much worn out with excitement and emotion to be able even to speak. Geoff could not tell whether she was glad or sorry to be brought to acknowledge that it was more likely to be John Musgrave whom she had seen than his ghost. She was convinced by his reasoning. Oh, yes; no doubt, she said, it must be so. Because you saw a man unexpectedly, that was no reason for supposing him to be dead. Oh, no--Geoff was quite right; she saw the reason of all he said. But Mary’s head and her heart and all her being thrilled with the shock. There was a ringing in her ears, and pulses were beating all over, and her blood coursing through her veins. The very country, so familiar, seemed to change its aspect. No stronger commentary could have been on the passage of time than the sudden glimpse of the face which she had seen just now on the roadside. But Mary did not think of that. The lake and the rural road that ran by it, and the hills in the distance, seemed to take again the colours of her youth. He was nothing to her, and never had been. She had not loved him, only had “taken an interest.” But all that was most poignant in her life came back to her, with the knowledge that he was here. Once more it seemed to be that time when all is vivid, when every day may be the turning-point of life--the time that was consciously but a drift and floating on of hour by hour when it existed, as is the present moment--but which, looking back upon it, seemed the time of free action, of choice, of every possibility. Was it so? Might he be met with round any corner--this man who had been banished so long? In the face of death and danger had he come back, he whom nobody had expected ever to come back? A strange half-question whether everything else had come back with him, and half-certainty that nothing for her could change, was in Mary’s mind as she lay back,