This conclusion relieved her from farther preoccupation, and she
went out herself to take up her conference with the gardener.
Thence she walked to the village post-office, a mile or so away;
and when she turned toward home, the early twilight was setting
in.

She had taken a foot-path across the downs, and as Boyne,
meanwhile, had probably returned from the station by the
highroad, there was little likelihood of their meeting on the
way. She felt sure, however, of his having reached the house
before her; so sure that, when she entered it herself, without
even pausing to inquire of Trimmle, she made directly for the
library. But the library was still empty, and with an unwonted
precision of visual memory she immediately observed that the
papers on her husband's desk lay precisely as they had lain when
she had gone in to call him to luncheon.

Then of a sudden she was seized by a vague dread of the unknown.
She had closed the door behind her on entering, and as she stood
alone in the long, silent, shadowy room, her dread seemed to take
shape and sound, to be there audibly breathing and lurking among
the shadows. Her short-sighted eyes strained through them, half-
discerning an actual presence, something aloof, that watched and
knew; and in the recoil from that intangible propinquity she
threw herself suddenly on the bell-rope and gave it a desperate
pull.

The long, quavering summons brought Trimmle in precipitately with
a lamp, and Mary breathed again at this sobering reappearance of
the usual.