Her lips quivered. "Please don't!"
He looked at her strangely. "I've been a brute, I've always been a brute, and I've hurt you again. I feel as if we'd trapped you, Rachel; can you forgive us?"
She looked beyond him, struggling to regain her composure, and she heard the wind shouting under the gables while the rain leaped against the window-panes. She could not answer Astry and before he spoke again Belhaven came to the door.
"I heard you were waiting for me, Astry; it's certainly obliging to go after your guests in such a storm. The rain's turning into snow and sleet."
"My dear Belhaven," said Astry easily, "I particularly wanted you. I have a word to say to you beforehand."
Belhaven glanced keenly from Astry to Rachel.
"I've no intentions of shirking my responsibilities," he said. "You'll find me ready."
Astry turned. "Then we'd better be off. Good night, Rachel."
She made no reply but as she looked up she met Belhaven's eyes and they were full of regret, of kindness, of appeal. The glance was fleeting; the next moment both men went out into the night and she heard the stir and jar of the motor-car as it started, backed, and finally whirled down the road. She could not resist the impulse to push aside the curtain and look out after it. Reluctant as she was to think of it, she could not dismiss that glance into oblivion; it was the look of a man mortally hurt.
The window-pane was covered now with frost and she had to breathe on it before she could clear a space to see out into the stormy night. Away in the distance were the retreating lights of Astry's big car, like monster eyes, growing smaller and smaller until she saw them no more. A gust of wind swayed the trees and swept the branches low across the front of the house and there was a sudden rush of snowflakes. She drew back a little and was on the point of returning to her chair when she saw a figure coming swiftly up the path from the gate, and something in the bearing, the quick, determined step, made her start and drop the curtain again. She went hastily to the hearth and stood there shivering, holding her hands out to the blaze, and her heart seemed to stop beating while she listened.