She looked at him with white expressionless face.

“It does not suit me to leave the neighbourhood at present,” she said calmly.

If she had been a man Ray would have struck her.  I could see his white teeth clenched fiercely together.

“It does not suit me,” he said, in a low tone vibrate with suppressed passion, “to have you here.  You are a plague spot upon the place.  You have been a plague spot all your life.  Whatever you touch you corrupt.”

She shrank away for a moment.  After all, she was a woman, and I hated Ray for his brutality.

“What a butcher you are!” she said, looking at him curiously.  “If ever you should marry—­God help the woman.”

“There are women and women,” he answered roughly.  “As for you, you do not count in the sex at all.”

She turned away from him with a little shudder, and for the first time during the interview she hid her face in her hands.  It was all I could do to avoid speech.

“Come,” he said, “do you agree?  Will you leave this place?  I promise you that your schemes here at any rate are at an end.”

She turned to me.  Perhaps something in my face had spoken the sympathy which I could not wholly suppress.

“Guy,” she said, “I want to be rid of this man, because every word he speaks—­hurts.  But I cannot even look at him any more.  At this war of words he has won.  I am beaten.  I admit it.  I am crushed.  I am not going away.  I spoke truthfully when I said that I came to England in search of your father.  We may both of us be the creatures that man would have you believe, but we have been husband and wife for eighteen years, and it is my duty to find out what has become of him.  Therefore I stay.”

I could see Ray’s black eyes flashing.  He almost gripped my arm as he drew me away.  We three left the house together.  At the bottom of the drive we met a carriage sent down from Rowchester.  Ray stopped it.

“Blenavon and I will take this carriage to the station,” he said.  “Will you, Ducaine, return to Lady Angela and tell her exactly what has happened?”

“Oh, come, I’m not going to have that,” Blenavon exclaimed.

“It will not be unexpected news,” Ray said sternly.  “Your sister suspects already.”

“I’m not going to be bundled away and leave you to concoct any precious story you think fit,” Blenavon declared, doggedly.  “I—­”

Ray opened the carriage door and gripped Blenavon’s arm.  “Get in,” he said in a low, suppressed tone.  There was something almost animal in the fury of Ray’s voice.  I looked away with a shudder.  Blenavon stepped quietly into the carriage.  Then Ray came over to me, and as he looked searchingly into my face, he pointed up the carriage drive.

“Boy,” he said, “you are young, and in hell itself there cannot be many such as she.  You think me brutal.  It is because I remember—­your mother!”

He stepped into the carriage.  I turned round and set out for Rowchester.