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long envelope from the Bank with the certificates to be signed.

But was it possible, really possible, that for all these years Hester had lived a lie? Must she choose between stoning the poor lost dog and tacitly sheltering Hester and her former lover, assenting to the deception, making part of it? She, too, to lie to Clive and keep him in his fool’s paradise? Oh, loathsome, hateful girl, creeping surreptitiously into their lives like a hidden fire, sitting there in her black cloak, extraordinarily quiet—like an octopus in the dark, holding its prey. And as the memory came, half suffocating her with the horrible old sense of hatred, it lighted a sudden shape unseen till then, yet evident, substantial, once made visible. How far did the betrayal go? Was it not only in the past but in the present too? Was the contempt, the hostility displayed by Hester towards Ingpen and expressed to Clive, merely a blind and subterfuge, merely part of the murky artifice? Was it all planned and plotted between them? His coming, and theirs, at the same time?—Their coming down Hester’s idea, as Clive had assured her.—How impossible, now that she saw it, to think otherwise;—though the thought tore at her heart as she saw it sweeping Ingpen, too, into the murk and foulness.