had not
yet left his sick bed.

Lady Maude sat alone in her room; the white robes upon her, the orthodox
veil, meant to shade her fair face thrown back from it. She had sent away
her attendants, bolted the door against her mother, and sat waiting her
summons. Waiting and thinking. Her cheek rested on her hand, and her
eyes were dreamy.

Is it true that whenever we are about to do an ill or unjust deed a
shadow of the fruits it will bring comes over us as a warning? Some
people will tell you so. A vision of the future seemed to rest on Maude
Kirton as she sat there; and for the first time all the injustice of the
approaching act rose in her mind as a solemn omen. The true facts were
terribly distinct. Her own dislike (it was indeed no less than dislike)
of the living lord, her lasting love for the dead one. All the miserable
stratagems they had been guilty of to win him; the dishonest plotting and
planning. What was she about to do? For her own advancement, to secure
herself a position in the great world, and not for love, she was about to
separate two hearts, which but for her would have been united in this
world and the next. She was thrusting herself upon Lord Hartledon,
knowing that in his true heart it was another that he loved, not her.
Yes, she knew that full well. He admired her beauty, and was marrying
her; marrying partly in pique against Anne Ashton; partly in blindfold
submission to the deep schemes of her mother, brought to bear on his
yielding nature. All the injustice done to Anne Ashton was in that moment
beating its refrain upon her heart; and a thought crossed her--would God
not avenge it? Another time she might have smiled at the thought as
fanciful: it seemed awfully real now. "I might give Val up yet," she
murmured; "there's just time."

She did not act upon the suggestion. Whether it was her warning, or
whether it was not, she allowed it to slip from her. Hartledon's broad
lands and coronet resumed their fascination over her soul; and when her
door was tried, Lady Maude had lost herself in that famous Spanish
chateau we have all occupied on occasion, touching the alterations she
had mentally planned in their town-house.

"Goodness, Maude, what do you lock yourself in for?"

Maude opened the door, and the countess-dowager floundered in. She was
resplendent in one of her old yellow satin gowns, a white turban with a
silver feather, and a pink scarf thrown on for ornament. The colours
would no do