They dashed away into the oppressive darkness, thick as a North Sea fog, seeing but little beyond the pale circle cast by their carriage lamps. Intermittent wicked blue flashes revealed the surrounding country at intervals of a second's duration, and a fleeting, dreary panorama was unrolled. These momentary glimpses showed the winding black road running in murky rivulets; they uncovered copses and groves with foliage bedraggled and rent, with branches torn from the trunks, so that their white scars flickered ghost-like beneath the lightning's glare; they photographed a flooded stretch of down lashed by the descending cloud-torrents and vanishing mysteriously into the ungauged distance.
Mercia leaned back upon the carriage cushions without speaking. Her diamonds quivered when the lightning came, and Britton could mark her wonderful profile.
A startling sense of the unreality of his married life lay upon him; the impassableness of the secret gulf separating him from his wife was most poignantly impressed.
"Mercia," he began, "I–I wonder–" and paused hesitatingly.
"What?" she asked, gravely meeting his eyes in a spasmodic flash of electricity.
"I wonder if you remember that evening we came over the trail by Indian River," Britton continued, "the night you saved my life!"
"Yes, I remember," she answered, studiously calm. "That was the beginning." Her voice showed that she did not wish to continue in that train of thought. Rex sighed and pressed as close to his side of the vehicle as he could till they swept through the curved drive of Britton Hall.
Rossland's borrowed carriage bowled up behind, bearing the lawyer and the curate.
Ainsworth bounced upon the lighted porch beside the husband and wife.
"Awful night!" he shivered. "Must be a pack of fiends abroad! Say–what was in those letters, Britton? Anything new turned up?"