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 The note troubled her, so that when Lily rose, and murmuring something, went into the house to dress, Ellen took no notice of her but got up and walked, in her slim black riding habit with the skirt pinned high (she did not ride astride, because she thought it ugly) down the steps into the garden.

If Rebecca failed her now, either through Aunt Lina or otherwise, she felt that she would not have courage to go on. She would kill herself because there would be nothing left. She fancied the humiliation of playing before row upon row of empty seats. If fate played her such a dirty trick, she would put herself out of fate's way. She was sick to death of being buffeted about, this way and that, achieving neither success nor happiness.

Angrily she beat her skirt with her riding crop. If Schneidermann went to London, it would only put her hopelessly in his debt. She might have to marry him out of gratitude, and she wanted no more weak husbands to clutter up her life.

And then this business of Wyck turning up suddenly as a lodger in her mother's house! It could be no one else; her mother's description fitted him too perfectly. . . a man whose family had been rich once, who worked with an electrical company, who talked a great deal of past splendors. He had reappeared, armed with her secret. She could fancy her mother caring for him, making him comfortable, giving him all the attentions he yearned for and never received in a world which kicked him about. She could trust Fergus, but Mr. Wyck was nasty, feminine. Still he had not betrayed his acquaintance either with her or poor Clarence. If he had done that, her mother would have spoken of it in her letter. . . . A friend of one of Hattie's children would be like a child of her own. It may have been that he felt as guilty as she herself felt; if that were true, he would not be likely to betray her. She thought of his shifting green eyes, his mincing manner and his habit of talking perpetually of the past. He was a worm. . . something one might find on lifting a stone!

Twice she had made the round of the garden, indifferent now