In an agony of terror, Honora followed, her head on fire, her heart pounding faster than the hoof beats.  But the animal she rode, though a good one, was no match for the great infuriated beast which she pursued.  Presently she came to a wooded corner where the road forked thrice, and beyond, not without difficulty,—­brought her sweating mare to a stand.  The quality of her fear changed from wild terror to cold dread.  A hermit thrush, in the wood near by, broke the silence with a song inconceivably sweet.  At last she went back to the farm-house, hoping against hope that Hugh might have returned by another road.  But he was not there.  The farmer was still nonchalantly whittling.

“Oh, how could you let any one get on a horse like that?” she cried.

“You’re his wife, ain’t you?” he asked.

Something in the man’s manner seemed to compel her to answer, in spite of the form of the question.

“I am Mrs. Chiltern,” she said.

He was looking at her with an expression that she found incomprehensible.  His glance was penetrating, yet here again she seemed to read compassion.  He continued to gaze at her, and presently, when he spoke, it was as though he were not addressing her at all.

“You put me in mind of a young girl I used to know,” he said; “seems like a long time ago.  You’re pretty, and you’re young, and ye didn’t know what you were doin,’ I’ll warrant.  Lost your head.  He has a way of gittin’ ’em—­always had.”

Honora did not answer.  She would have liked to have gone away, but that which was stronger than her held her.

“She didn’t live here,” he explained, waving his hand deprecatingly towards the weather-beaten house.  “We lived over near Morrisville in them days.  And he don’t remember me, your husband don’t.  I ain’t surprised.  I’ve got considerable older.”

Honora was trembling from head to foot, and her hands were cold.

“I’ve got her picture in there, if ye’d like to look at it,” he said, after a while.

“Oh, no!” she cried.  “Oh, no!”

“Well, I don’t know as I blame you.”  He sat down again and began to whittle.  “Funny thing, chance,” he remarked; “who’d a thought I should have owned that there hoss, and he should have come around here to ride it?”

She tried to speak, but she could not.  The hideous imperturbability of the man’s hatred sickened her.  And her husband!  The chips fell in silence until a noise on the road caused them to look up.  Chiltern was coming back.  She glanced again at the farmer, but his face was equally incapable, or equally unwilling, to express regret.  Chiltern rode into the dooryard.  The blood from the scratch on his forehead had crossed his temple and run in a jagged line down his cheek, his very hair (as she had sometimes seen it) was damp with perspiration, blacker, kinkier; his eyes hard, reckless, bloodshot.  So, in the past, must he have emerged from dozens of such wilful, brutal contests with man and beast.  He had beaten the sweat-stained horse (temporarily—­such was the impression Honora received), but she knew that he would like to have killed it for its opposition.