angel of light compared with the dark child of Nature. Agnes was tall
and slender, and moved with a great air of dignity and calm
self-possession, and this to the uncontrolled Chaldea was also a matter
of offence. She inwardly tried to belittle her rival by thinking what a
milk-and-water useless person she was, but the steady and resolute look
in the lady's brown eyes gave the lie to this mental assertion. Lady
Agnes had an air of breeding and command, which, with all her beauty,
Chaldea lacked, and as she passed along like a cold, stately goddess,
the gypsy rolled on the grass in an ecstasy of rage. She could never be
what her rival was, and what her rival was, as she suspected, formed
Lambert's ideal of womanhood. When she again peered through the bush,
Lady Agnes had disappeared. But there was no need for Chaldea to ask her
jealous heart where she had gone. With the stealth and cunning of a Red
Indian, the gypsy took up the trail, and saw the woman she followed
enter the cottage. For a single moment she had it in her mind to run to
the camp and bring Pine, but reflecting that in a moment of rage the man
might kill Lambert, Chaldea checked her first impulse, and bent all her
energies towards getting sufficiently near to listen to a conversation
which was not meant for her ears.

Meanwhile, Agnes had been admitted by Mrs. Tribb, a dried-up little
woman with the rosy face of a winter apple, and a continual smile of
satisfaction with herself and with her limited world. This consisted of
the cottage, in the wood, and of the near villages, where she repaired
on occasions to buy food. Sometimes, indeed, she went to The Manor, for,
born and bred on the Garvington estates, Mrs. Tribb knew all the
servants at the big house. She had married a gamekeeper, who had died,
and unwilling to leave the country she knew best, had gladly accepted
the offer of Lord Garvington to look after the woodland cottage. In this
way Lambert became possessed of an exceedingly clean housekeeper, and a