It was even likely that he had only thrown out his threat for the sake of terrifying his wife, and was now far beyond the limits of the parish.

So great was the relief she felt after she had talked with the vicar that she almost ceased to believe there was any danger at all; looking at it in the light of her present mood, she almost wondered why she had thought it necessary to tell Mr.Ambrose--until suddenly a vision of her friend the squire, attacked and perhaps killed, in his own park, rose to her mental vision, and she remembered what agonies of fear she had felt for him until she had sent for the vicar.

The latter indeed seemed to have been a sort of _deus ex maohina_ by whom she suddenly obtained peace of mind and a sense of security in the hour of her greatest distress.
All that afternoon she lay upon her bed, while Nellie sat beside her and read to her, and stroked her hands; for Nellie was in reality passionately fond of her mother and suffered almost as much at the sight of her suffering as she could have done had she been in pain herself.
Both Mrs.Goddard and the child started at the sound of Stamboul's baying, which was unlike anything they had ever heard before, and Nellie ran to the window.
"It is only Mr.Juxon and Stamboul having a game," said Nellie.

"What a noise he made, though! Did not he ?" Poor Nellie--had she had any idea of what the "game" was from which the squire found it so hard to make his hound desist, she must have gone almost mad with horror.

For the game was her own father, poor child.