Bess of the Woods by Warwick Deeping

Jeffray lay back in the chaise with the landscape moving unmeaningly before his eyes. He felt numb and cold, utterly humiliated for Bess's sake. Painter Dick, who had scarcely so much as heard of this Belphœbe of the woods, was the last person to suspect that the fierce-faced girl who had smitten her husband on the mouth had any tragic hold over Jeffray's destiny. The eager joy in the loveliness of the May morning had overtaxed Richard's strength. Wilson knew something of the exhaustion that may follow even an innocent intoxication of the senses.

As for Richard, he was as a man who had held some rich and precious vase between his hands, gazing at it wonderingly, only to find it slip and shatter itself in fragments at his feet. What had happened in the forest that Bess should have become Dan Grimshaw's wife? Had she despaired of escaping the man, and in a fit of dumb indifference pledged her troth in token of surrender? Richard's hope in her rebelled at such a paltry reading of the riddle. No, Bess had more heart, more pride than that. They had tricked her, Dan and old Isaac between them-Isaac, that white-haired and soft-voiced old devil whom he had once taken for a saint. They had tricked her, and this marriage had been the only end.