It was only at Normanthorpe that her second husband became aware of her possession, one afternoon when she fancied that she had the house to herself.

So two could play at the game of consistent concealment! He could not complain; it was in the bond, and he never said a word.

But he stood outside the window till she was done, for Rachel saw him in a mirror, and for many an afternoon to come he would hover outside the same window at the same time.
Why had he married her?
Did he care for her, or did he not?
What could be the object of that extraordinary step?
Rachel was as far from hitting upon a feasible solution of these mysteries as she was from penetrating the deeper one of his own past life.

Sometimes she put the like questions to herself; but they were more easily answered.

She had been in desperate straits, in reckless despair; even if her second marriage had turned out no better than her first, she could not have been worse off than she was on the night of her acquittal; but she had been very well off ever since.