He had ordered her away. He had parted her from her child. This man--her husband that used to be, who had ruined her life by his cruel words and studied neglect. The blame of her sin rested on his shoulders, and she had suffered in the eyes of the world. Now once more he triumphed, and while he was resting, honoured and respected in his own house, she was flying through the night like a guilty creature.
"Oh!" muttered Mrs. Belswin between her clenched teeth, "if I was a man I'd kill him. But I can do nothing! I can do nothing. Yet I don't know. If I can persuade that cowardly Ferrari, or Belk. Belk would do anything for me. What is to be done must be done to-night--to-morrow it will be too late. Which way am I to turn?"
She paused a moment; pressed her hands on her beating heart, then suddenly made up her mind.
The Chequers Inn was just on the outskirts of Deswarth, and a comparatively short distance from Thornstream, so it did not take Mrs. Belswin long, at the rapid pace at which she was walking, to arrive there.
It stood a short distance back from the road, and the night being hot, all the doors and windows were open, letting the yellow light within stream out on to the dark village street. On the benches outside a number of yokels were drinking and talking loudly together about some fortnight-old event which had just reached their out-of-the-way parish. Mrs. Belswin, not wishing to be recognised, flitted rapidly past them, and was standing in the passage hesitating whether to make herself known to the landlord or not, when luckily at that moment Ferrari came out of a side door with the intention of going into the taproom. Like a ghost the woman glided forward and laid her hand on his arm.
The passage was so dark that he was able to recognise her by her voice alone, and the noise from the taproom was so loud that only a quick ear like his could have distinguished her low tones.
"Come into some room. I wish to speak to you."
"Here, then!" he said, drawing her into the room from whence he had emerged, "what is wrong? Il marito! eh! Dio! By your face there is trouble."
With a sigh of relief Mrs. Belswin flung herself wearily into a chair, while Ferrari carefully closed the door and took up his position on the hearthrug. Even in that moment of anxiety Mrs. Belswin, with that noting of trivial things common to a preoccupied mind, noticed the tawdry furnishing of the apartment--the gaudy wall-paper, on which hung brilliantly coloured portraits of the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and General Gordon; the vivid red of the tablecloth, the dingy blue of the chairs, and the tarnished mirror over the fireplace swathed in fly spotted yellow gauze. Ferrari had evidently been smoking, for there yet lingered about the room the odour of a cigar, and the atmosphere was slightly hazy with smoke, while the smoky flame of a badly trimmed kerosene lamp faintly illumined the whole place.