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Updated: June 23, 2025
Ellesborough's pulse beat quicker as he parted from them, for he realized that he would find Rachel alone in the farm. Yes, there she was at the open door, greeting him with a quiet face a smile even. She led the way into the sitting-room, where she had just drawn down the blinds and closed the curtains of the window looking on the farm-yard.
Half way up the hill, Janet came across old Betts bringing down a small cart-full of furze for fodder, and she stopped to speak to him. A little later on, nearer to the camp she overtook Dempsey, who rather officiously joined her, and assuming at once that she was in quest of the Camp Commandant, directed her to a short cut leading straight to Ellesborough's quarters.
By what she had done in her bewilderment and fear, in order to escape the penalty of frankness, she might only as she was now beginning to perceive have stumbled into fresh dangers. It was as though she stood on the friable edge of some great crater, some gulf of destruction, on which her feet were perpetually slipping and sinking, and only Ellesborough's hold could ultimately save her.
Ellesborough's duties at the Ralstone camp were in a state of suspended animation, since, in these expectant days before the signing of the armistice, there had been a general slackening, as though by silent and general consent, in the timber felling due to the war throughout the beautiful district in which Millsborough lay. Enough damage had been done already to the great wood-sanctuaries.
Probably, if all she had for capital was the old chap's legacy. Well serve her right serve her, damned, doubly right! Ellesborough's kisses would make up. These thoughts, after a momentary respite, held him in their grip as he walked London streets. Suspicion of the past ugly and venomous flapped its black wings about him. Had Rachel ever been faithful to him even in the early days?
But in the dark, when she had put out her light, the cry that shaped itself in her mind was identical with that sudden misgiving of the afternoon, when on Ellesborough's arrival she had first heard his voice downstairs talking to Janet. "I wish he knew!" But this time it was no mere passing qualm. It had grown into something intense and haunting.
In Rachel's case the first-fruits had been wasted on a marriage, of which the ugly and inevitable incidents haunted Ellesborough's imagination. One moment he shrank from the thought of them; the next he could not restrain the protesting rush of passion the vow that his love should put her back on that pinnacle of honour and respect from which fate should never have allowed her to fall.
In a few more minutes they were in the sitting-room, Rachel throwing off her thick coat with Ellesborough's help, and declaring that she was not the least tired. "Don't believe her!" said Ellesborough, smiling at Janet. "She is not a truthful woman!" And his proud eyes returned to Rachel as though now that there was light to see her by he had no other use for them.
Well, after all, if the situation became disagreeable, Rachel would only have to choose Ellesborough's country as her own, and begin her new life there. Supposing that all went well! Janet's mind went through some painful alterations of confidence and fear, as she walked her bicycle along the rough forest-track leading to Ellesborough's hut.
Rachel woke the following morning in that dreary mood when all the colour and the glamour seem to have been washed out of life, and the hopes and dreams which keep up a perpetual chatter in every normal mind are suddenly dumb. How was she going to face Ellesborough's long absence?
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