Even the incident of the maiden in the wood, her death and her concealment in the lake, had scarcely stirred the memory of Emily. For the reverent and idyllic scene in which the two knights had “laid” the body of the maiden among the reeds and water lilies of the lake, to be discovered by her kinsmen peeping through the tangled thickets of wild rose, was as remote as possible from the sordid ugliness of Emily’s disposal and discovery in a muddy sack near Barnes.

But now she had finished. And she did suspect. When she came to the passage describing Gelert’s remorse for the betrayal of his old companion-at-arms, his gloomy bearing and penitent vows, she thought suddenly of Stephen’s late extravagant gloom, which she was still unable to understand. And then she suspected. Idly the thought came, and idly she put it away. But it returned, and she hated herself because of it. It grew to a stark suspicion, and she sat for a moment in an icy terror, frozen with pain by her imaginations. Then in a fever of anxiety she went back to the beginning of the manuscript, and hurried through it again, noting every incident of the story in the hideous light of her suspicions. And as she turned over the untidy pages, the terror grew.