gone out. I—I did not wish to infuriate them. It seemed to me that that—that—a great deal depended upon their not being infuriated."
"Aye," said Haworth, "a good deal."
He asked a good many questions Ffrench did not quite understand. He seemed in a questioning humor and went over the ground step by step. He asked what the mob had said and done and even how they had looked.
"It's a bad lookout for Murdoch," he said. "They'll have a spite again' him. They're lyin' quiet a bit now, because it's safest, but they'll carry their spite."
At Ffrench's invitation he went up to the house with him to dinner. As they passed into the grounds, Murdoch passed out. He was walking quickly and scarcely seemed to see them until Ffrench spoke.
"It's a queer time of day for him to be here," said Haworth, when he was gone.
Ffrench's reply held a touch of embarrassment.
"He is not usually here so early," he said. "He has probably been doing some little errand for Rachel."
The truth was that he had been with her for an hour, and that, on seeing Haworth coming down the road with her father, she had sent him away.
"I want to be alone when he comes," she had said.
And when Murdoch said "Why?" she had answered, "Because it will be easier."
When they came in, she was sitting with the right side of her face toward them. They could see nothing of the mark upon her left temple. It was not a large mark nor a disfiguring one, but there were traces of its presence in her pallor. She did not rise, and would have kept this side of her face out of view, but Haworth came and took his seat before her. It would not have been easy for her
