And the evening sun, reddening the upper stems of the pines, and warming the mellow tiles of his dear cottage, had no more to say to Langholm's spirit than his beloved roses.
The man had emerged from the dreamy, artistic, aesthetic existence into which he had drifted through living alone amid so much simple beauty; he was in real, human, haunting trouble, and the manlier man for it already.
Could he be mistaken after all?
No; the more he pondered, the more convinced he felt.

Everything pointed to the same conclusion, beginning with that first dinner-party at Upthorpe, and that first conversation of which he remembered every word.

Mrs.Steel was Mrs.Minchin--the notorious Mrs.Minchin--the Mrs.Minchin who had been tried for her husband's murder, and acquitted to the horror of a righteous world.
And he had been going to write a book about her, and it was she herself who had given him the idea! But was it?
There had been much light talk about Mrs.Steel's novel, and the plot that Mrs.Steel had given Langholm, but that view of the matter had been more of a standing joke than an intellectual bond between them.

It was strange to think of it in the former light to-night.
Langholm recalled more than one conversation upon the same subject.

It had had a fascination for Rachel, which somehow he was sorry to remember now.