seen
her in the library, which was my habitual place for months. Why did she
stand before me with the candle in her hand, with her cruel contemptuous
eyes fixed on me, and the glittering serpent, like a familiar demon, on
her breast? For a moment I thought this fulfilment of my vision at
Vienna marked some dreadful crisis in my fate, but I saw nothing in
Bertha's mind, as she stood before me, except scorn for the look of
overwhelming misery with which I sat before her . . . "Fool, idiot, why
don't you kill yourself, then?"--that was her thought. But at length her
thoughts reverted to her errand, and she spoke aloud. The apparently
indifferent nature of the errand seemed to make a ridiculous anticlimax
to my prevision and my agitation.

"I have had to hire a new maid. Fletcher is going to be married, and she
wants me to ask you to let her husband have the public-house and farm at
Molton. I wish him to have it. You must give the promise now, because
Fletcher is going to-morrow morning--and quickly, because I'm in a
hurry."

"Very well; you may promise her," I said, indifferently, and Bertha swept
out of the library again.

I always shrank from the sight of a new person, and all the more when it
was a person whose mental life was likely to weary my reluctant insight
with worldly ignorant trivialities. But I shrank especially from the
sight of this new maid, because her advent had been announced to me at a
moment to which I could not cease to attach some fatality: I had a vague
dread that I should find her mixed up with the dreary drama of my
life--that some new sickening vision would reveal her to me as an evil
genius. When at last I did unavoidably meet her, the vague dread was
changed into definite disgust. She was a tall, wiry, dark-eyed woman,
this Mrs. Archer, with a face handsome enough to give her coarse hard
nature the odious finish of bold, self-confident coquetry. That was
enough to make me avoid her, quite apart from the contemptuous feeling
with which she contemplated me. I seldom saw her; but I perceived that
she rapidly became a favourite with her mistress, and, after the lapse of
eight or nine months, I began to be aware that there had arisen in
Bertha's mind towards this woman a mingled feeling of fear and
dependence, and that this feeling was associated with ill-defined images
of candle-light scenes in her dressing-room, and the locking-up of
something in Bertha's cabinet. My interviews wi