CHAPTER IV.
For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one! -- RUDYARD KIPLING.
When Hugh awoke the morning after Lady Newhaven's party the day was already far advanced.

A hot day had succeeded to a hot night.

For a few seconds he lay like one emerging from the influence of morphia, who feels his racked body still painlessly afloat on a sea of rest, but is conscious that it is drifting back to the bitter shores of pain, and who stirs neither hand nor foot for fear of hastening the touch of the encircling, aching sands on which he is so soon to be cast in agony once more.
His mind cleared a little.

Rachel's grave face stood out against a dark background--a background darker surely than that of the summer night.

He remembered with self-contempt the extravagant emotion which she had aroused in him.
"Absurd," Hugh said to himself, with the distrust of all sudden springs of pure emotion which those who have misused them rarely escape.