Standing in his own office on the floor below, he glanced vacantly around him.  After a moment he said aloud, as though to somebody in the room:  “Well, I tried it.  But that is not the way.”

Later, young Mrs. Malcourt, passing, saw him seated at his desk, head bent as though listening to something interesting.  But there was nobody else in the office.

When at last he roused himself the afternoon sun was shining level in the west; long rosy beams struck through the woods turning the silver stems of the birches pink.

On the footbridge spanning the meadow brook he saw his wife and Hamil leaning over the hand-rail, shoulder almost touching shoulder; and he went to the window and stood intently observing them.

They seemed to be conversing very earnestly; once she threw back her pretty head and laughed unrestrainedly, and the clear sound of it floated up to him through the late sunshine; and once she shook her head emphatically, and once he saw her lay her hand on Hamil’s arm—­an impulsive gesture, as though to enforce her words, but it was more like a caress.

A tinge of malice altered Malcourt’s smile as he watched them; the stiffening grin twitched at his cheeks.

“Now I wonder,” he thought to himself, “whether it is the right way after all!...  I don’t think I’ll threaten her again with—­alternatives.  There’s no telling what a fool might do in a panic.”  Then, as though the spectacle bored him, he yawned, stretched his arms and back gracefully, turned and touched the button that summoned his servant.

“Order the horses and pack as usual, Simmons,” he said with another yawn.  “I’m going to New York.  Isn’t Mr. Portlaw here yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you say he went away on horseback?”

“Yes, sir, this morning.”

“And you don’t know where?”

“No, sir.  Mr. Portlaw took the South Road.”

Malcourt grinned again, perfectly certain, now, of Portlaw’s destination; and thinking to himself that unless his fatuous employer had been landed in a ditch somewhere, en route, he was by this time returning from Pride’s Fall with considerable respect for Mrs. Ascott.

* * * * *

As a matter of fact, Portlaw had already started on his way back.  Mrs. Ascott was not at Pride’s Hall—­her house—­when he presented himself at the door.  Her servant, evidently instructed, did not know where Mrs. Ascott and Miss Palliser had gone or when they might return.

So Portlaw betook himself heavily to the village inn, where he insulted his astonished stomach with a noonday dinner, and found the hard wooden chairs exceedingly unpleasant.

About five o’clock he got into his saddle with an unfeigned groan, and out of it again at Mrs. Ascott’s door.  They told him there that Mrs. Ascott was not at home.

Whether this might be the conventional manner of informing him that she declined to receive him, or whether she really was out, he had no means of knowing; so he left his cards for Mrs. Ascott and Miss Palliser, also the note which young Mrs. Malcourt had given him; clambered once more up the side of his horse, suppressing his groans until out of hearing and well on his way toward the fatal boundary.