And then—and then—there was the picture in front of her of Josiah and the "second honeymoon."
Thus while she sat there gazing at the man she passionately loved playing polo, she was silently suffering all the anguish of which a woman's heart is capable.
The only possible way was to part from Hector forever—to say the last good-bye before she should go, like a sheep, to the slaughter.
When she was once more the wife of Josiah she could never look upon his face again.
And if Hector had known the prospect that awaited her at Bessington Hall, it would have driven him—already mad—to frenzy.
The day wore on, and still Theodora's fears kept her from allowing a tête-à-tête when he dismounted and joined them for tea.
But fate had determined otherwise. And as the soft evening came several of the party walked down by the river—which ran on the western side below the rose-gardens and the wood of firs—to see Barbara's many breeds of ducks and water-fowl.
Then Hector's determination to be alone with her conquered for the time. Theodora found herself strolling with him in a path of meeting willows, with a summer-house at the end, by the water's bank.