He went down into the hollow. The high wooden gate stood wide open—evidence that there was some one lingering below. The leaves were still on the trees, the broad feathery ferns were still green. There was a low yellow light gleaming behind the ridge of rock and the steep earthy slope above. The rush of the water sounded loud and clear in the silence.
Leonard crept cautiously down the winding moss-grown track, holding his dogs behind him in a leash, and constraining those well-mannered brutes to perfect quiet. He looked down into the deep hollow, through which the water runs, and over which there is that narrow foot bridge, whence the waterfall is seen in all its beauty—an arc of silvery light cleaving the dark rock above, and flashing down to the dark rock below.
Christabel was standing on the bridge, with de Cazalet at her side. They were not looking up at the waterfall. Their faces were turned the other way, to the rocky river bed, fringed with fern and wild rank growth of briar and weed. The Baron was talking earnestly, his head bent over Christabel, till it seemed to those furious eyes staring between the leafage, as if his lips must be touching her face. His hand clasped hers. That was plain enough.
Just then the spaniel stirred, and rustled the dank dead leaves—Christabel started, and looked up towards the trees that screened her husband's figure. A guilty start, a guilty look, Leonard thought. But those eyes of hers could not pierce the leafy screen, and they drooped again, looking downward at the water beneath her feet. She stood in a listening attitude, as if her whole being hung upon de Cazalet's words.
What was he pleading so intensely? What was that honeyed speech, to which the false wife listened, unresistingly, motionless as the bird spell-bound by the snake. So might Eve have listened to the first tempter. In just such an attitude, with just such an expression, every muscle relaxed, the head gently drooping, the eyelids lowered, a tender smile curving the lips—the first tempted wife might have hearkened to the silver-sweet tones of her seducer.
"Devil!" muttered Leonard between his clenched teeth.
Even in the agony of his rage—rage at finding that this open folly, which he had pretended not to see, had been but the light and airy prelude to the dark theme of secret guilt—that wrong which he felt most deeply was his wife's falsehood to herself—her wilful debasement of her own noble character. He had known her, and believed in her as perfect and pure among women, and now he saw her deliberately renouncing all claim to man's respect, lowering herself to the level of the women who can be tempted. He had believed her invulnerable. It was as if Diana herself had gone astray—as if the very ideal and archetype of purity among women had become perverted.
He stood, breathless almost, holding back his dogs, gazing, listening with as much intensity as if only the senses of hearing and sight lived in him—and all the rest were extinct. He saw the Baron draw nearer and nearer as he urged his prayer—who could doubt the nature of that prayer—until the two figures were posed in one perfect harmonious whole, and then his arm stole gently round the slender waist.
Christabel sprang away from him with a coy laugh.
"Not now," she said, in a clear voice, so distinct as to reach that listener's ears. "I can answer nothing now. To-morrow."