“That is indeed true, sir,” replied Dick with an admirable gravity, “and if I might be allowed to suggest it, a pamphlet upon that interesting subject would be less dangerous work than coquetting with the latest edition of the Marquise de Brinvilliers.”

The word pamphlet was a bugle-call to Mr. Hazlewood.

“Ah!  Speaking of pamphlets, my boy,” he began, and walked over to a desk which was littered with papers.

“We have not the time, sir,” Dick interrupted from the bay of the window.  A woman had come out from the cottage.  She unlatched a little gate in her garden which opened on to the meadow.  She crossed it.  Yet another gate gave her entrance to the garden of Little Beeding.  In a moment Hubbard announced: 

“Mrs. Ballantyne”; and Stella came into the room and stood near to the door with a certain constraint in her attitude and a timid watchfulness in her big eyes.  She had the look of a deer.  It seemed to Dick that at one abrupt movement she would turn and run.

Mr. Hazlewood pressed forward to greet her and she smiled with a warmth of gratitude.  Dick, watching her from the bay window, was surprised by the delicacy of her face, by a look of fragility.  She was dressed very simply in a coat and short skirt of white, her shoes and her gloves were of white suede, her hat was small.

“And this is my son Richard,” said Mr. Hazlewood; and Dick came forward out of the bay.  Stella Ballantyne bowed to him but said no word.  She was taking no risks even at the hands of the son of her friend.  If advances of friendliness were to be made they must be made by him, not her.  There was just one awkward moment of hesitation.  Then Dick Hazlewood held out his hand.

“I am very glad to meet you, Mrs. Ballantyne,” he said cordially, and he saw the blood rush into her face and the fear die out in her eyes.

The neighbourhood, to quote Mr. Hazlewood, had not been kind to Stella Ballantyne.  She had stood in the dock and the fact tarnished her.  Moreover here and there letters had come from India.  The verdict was inevitable, but—­but—­there was a doubt about its justice.  The full penalty—­no.  No one desired or would have thought it right, but something betwixt and between in the proper spirit of British compromise would not have been amiss.  Thus gossip ran.  More-over Stella Ballantyne was too good-looking, and she wore her neat and simple clothes too well.  To some of the women it was an added offence when they considered what she might be wearing if only the verdict had been different.  Thus for a year Stella had been left to her own company except for a couple of visits which the Reptons had paid to her.  At the first she had welcomed the silence, the peace of her loneliness.  It was a balm to her.  She recovered like a flower in the night.  But she was young—­she was twenty-eight this year—­and as her limbs ceased to be things of lead and became once more aglow