hadn't"--she faltered an instant--"I'm not worse than you, and I'm
not so bad, for you've done something that you're ashamed to tell
me."

He had taken out his watch; he looked at it with quick intensity, as
if not hearing nor heeding her. Then, his calculating eyes raised,
he fixed her long enough to exclaim with unsurpassable horror and
contempt: "You raving maniac!" He turned away from her; he bounded
down the avenue in the direction from which they had come, and, while
she watched him, strode away, across the grass, toward the short cut
to the station.



CHAPTER IV



His bags, by the time she got home, had been brought to the house,
but Beatrice and Muriel, immediately informed of this, waited for
their brother in vain. Their sister said nothing to them of her
having seen him, and she accepted after a little, with a calmness
that surprised herself, the idea that he had returned to town to
denounce her. She believed this would make no difference now--she
had done what she had done. She had somehow a stiff faith in Mrs.
Churchley. Once that so considerable mass had received its impetus
it wouldn't, it couldn't pull up. It represented a heavy-footed
person, incapable of further agility. Adela recognised too how well
it might have come over her that there were too many children.
Lastly the girl fortified herself with the reflexion, grotesque in