She bought a new organ for the church, although she cared nothing about music, and she spent many hours on her knees in her high pew with the green curtains though she knew nothing about prayer.

She began several letters to her sister, formal epistles, asking after her health, and the drama that she was appearing in, and asking, vaguely, for news.

But she sent none of these.

Towards September she felt much more at ease and she began to think with a great thankfulness that the haunting, as she secretly named it to herself, had ceased. She could not, of course, forget Martha, but the figure of the actress became vague and blurred in her mind, and for hours together, when she was absorbed in some task or in some outside interest she would not think at all of the woman in the full, beruffled, interchangeable blue and red taffeta, in the little hat and the crimson feathers.

She began to cease wondering how Martha was employing her time, to cease turning over in her mind, so ignorant of such affairs, the possible various episodes of that alien yet closely connected life. She ceased to wonder and to brood over these coquetries, the wickednesses, the successes of Martha. She was soothed by a sense of being more fairly treated than she had hitherto been, for it had always seemed to her grossly unjust that she, the virtuous, the spotless, the irreproachable, should have been troubled in the slightest by any thought of the worthless, the degraded, the contemptible.

Surely the reward for her noble life of complete self-sacrifice should, at least, have been complete peace of mind.

'God,' she thought, 'should have seen to that.' And now she felt that He had done so, for when she did think of her sister it was in a vague, compassionate fashion. She would still wake up suddenly in the night, alert, and full of exasperation, expecting to be challenged by that thought of Martha. But now there would be emptiness, merely her large, handsome, silent bedroom with the harvest moon showing through the unshuttered windows, and a sense of security all about. She would think of Martha, certainly, but only of someone very far away who did not concern her in the least.

She would lie contentedly in the large bed considering her own possessions, Stibbards, full of her furniture, her silver, her pictures, her china; the stables, with her horses in them, the park full of her timber and sheep and cattle; her farms, well stocked, prosperous. All hers, glorifying her, supporting her, giving her honour, dignity and importance, while Martha had no part in any of them. Martha had run away from all this thirty years before, when she had gone through the garden perfumed by the early currants, and slipped away to her worthless young soldier, to whom she had not been for very long faithful.

In the first week of September, Miss Kezia Faunce superintended the making of pickles, sauces, and relishes from the early unripe fruit. Never yet, since as a girl of ten or so she began to help her mother in these domestic duties, had Miss Kezia missed the different picklings, preservings, jam and wine making as they came round at their several times of the year. The cupboards, closets, and presses of Stibbards were filled by the products of her industry; perfumes, lotions, preserves, balm, aromatics, sweet waters, washes, and confections, more than she would be able to use in the rest of her life, stood stocked in the darkness that they filled with a musty fragrance.

This year, when the last day of this work was over, Kezia Faunce felt suddenly tired, almost as if she were going to be ill. She walked out into the garden about the time of sunset in a lassitude that was too indifferent to seek rest. The evening was cloudless, overwhelming in spacious gold, the landscape was transfigured by the pure uninterrupted light of the western sun; the air was full of Autumn fragrances, and from the house came the mingled sour-sweet smell from the preserving-pans, still redolent of hot spices and sugared fruits.

The large house was silent, as if everyone rested after the day's labour. There was no one in the wide trim gardens but Miss Kezia Faunce herself. She wiped continually with a delicate handkerchief the last sparkles of sugar from her fingers. She felt a mingled sensation of excitement and apprehension, but she did not think of Martha at all. She went to the herb garden and noted how the various plants, hot and cold, moist and dry, were growing in the warm air. Everything grew well that year. It seemed as if there was going to be a splendid harvest of every kind of fruit, a thing that Miss Kezia Faunce could not remember having happened before—everything in fruitage at once. She found herself trembling and she sat down on the circular stone seat beside the great beds of thyme, rosemary, and lavender, all silver grey in that increasing golden light, for, as a lamp will flare up at the last before it goes out, so as the sun finally sank it seemed to give out a more powerful glow.

Miss Kezia Faunce thought that never before had she noted so much light. She sat there on the semi-circular stone seat, between those high, silver-grey plants of rosemary, lavender, marjoram; she felt her senses becoming slightly confused and she had a sensation of light-headedness, as she had often experienced before a severe thunderstorm. Her glance fastened on a large rose bush in the bed opposite, which looked unnaturally tall and seemed to have uncommonly large red thorns. There were no flowers now on this bush, but she knew that it bore crimson blooms, the last of which had fallen about a week ago.

She thought then, not definitely of Martha, but of a bill poster that she had seen stuck up on an ugly brick wall in Paris as she drove to the station. An actress with a nose and mouth something like her own, holding a large bouquet of crimson roses with a white paper frill. The garden seemed too large and the sky too vast, and the bright light of the sunset too overwhelming for Miss Kezia Faunce's senses.

She turned and walked back towards the house as one seeking a refuge. She had not quite reached the large terrace when she saw Sarah, the new kitchen-maid, coming hurriedly towards her.

Miss Faunce frowned. It was not part of Sarah's duties to run errands or take messages to her mistress and she certainly had no business to be in the garden in the print dress and the white apron, now slightly sticky, which she had worn to help in the pickling and the preserving.

Miss Kezia Faunce hastened her step with a rebuke ready on her lips, but what Sarah had to say was so curious that Miss Faunce forbore her reproof.

The little kitchen-maid, who spoke rather breathlessly, had, she said, been standing at the kitchen door scouring out the last of Cook's pots when she had looked up and seen a lady standing just before the square of potherbs. She had stared at Sarah, smiled, turned away without a word, and gone through the gate in the privet hedge towards the house. Sarah had run after her, but lost sight of her. Then, seeing Miss Faunce in the distance, she had thought that she should tell her of this stranger.

'What was there strange in it?' asked Miss Kezia quickly. 'It was some visitor who had lost her way and come to the side kitchen door instead of to the front entrance. I can't see anything peculiar about it, Sarah.'

'But she was so odd, ma'am, and not like anyone round here.'

'What was she like, child? Don't make so many words about nothing. What was this lady like?'

'She was very finely dressed, ma'am, and had a queer look of you.'

'A look of me? What do you mean, child? Express yourself better. Do you mean that she was like me?'

The kitchen-maid became confused under this severity.

'She was something like you, ma'am.