Hurt as he was by his wife’s hard and unnatural conduct, and by the barrier she set up between them, he was determined to make one last effort that night to bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind. He was conscious that he had been guilty of no one fault in his conduct towards her except in the weakness which had caused him to be over-indulgent to her caprices. Deep as his love for her had been, founded on admiration which had never grown weaker, the manner in which she had treated him of late had affected his own feeling for her strongly. He had known and made allowance for the difference between their temperaments, but he had always believed, in spite of her caprices and her neglect of her domestic duties, that what heart she had was sound. Now, however, he was faced with doubts which it was impossible to dispel, and it was without so much indulgence in his heart as usual that he prepared for a final battle with her. If she were to persist in refusing to treat him with any appearance of ordinary civility, he would put it to her that some settlement would have to be arrived at to make life for either of them possible. He feared that she would welcome the prospect, but he hoped that an appeal to her feelings might result in softening her. In the meantime Rhoda was undergoing a painful ordeal. It was now a week since the night of the frustrated elopement, and things were going on in the same uncomfortable manner as ever at the Mill-house. Rhoda gave most of her time to Caryl, and saw as little of either Sir Robert or Lady Sarah as could be helped, in order that nothing in her conduct might give the wife an excuse for saying that she stood between her and her husband. Rhoda, who always did her own shopping in the evening when Caryl was in bed, was returning at dusk to the house when a man in a motor-coat came quickly across the road towards her. She would have hurried on, for she recognised Jack Rotherfield, but he was determined to speak to her, and she had to submit. She quailed under the look of intense mistrust and dislike which shot out of his handsome dark eyes as he spoke to her. “Miss Pembury,” he said in a low voice, “I want to speak to you. You have been poisoning people’s minds against me, and I have a right to be heard.” Rhoda was indignant. His manner was threatening and his tone almost abusive. And yet this was the man who had murdered Langton, who had deceived his old friend and guardian, and who had done his best to rob him of his wife. “I will hear whatever you have to say, Mr. Rotherfield,” said she. He walked beside her, and went on in the same offended tone: “What is it you have said against me?” She stopped. It was now so dark that, in the side road into which they had turned, they could stand and talk without much fear of being remarked upon by passers-by. “I have said nothing against you.”