* * * * *

At the same hour, a haggard and despairing woman raised herself from the
floor where she had lain for many weary hours, trying by passionate
tears and cries and outbursts of unavailing lamentation to exhaust or
stifle the anguish which seemed to have reached its most intolerable
point. Her robes were soiled and crushed, her hair was dishevelled, her
eyes were red with weeping; and, as she rose, she wrung her hands
together and then raised them in appeal to the God whom she had so long
forgotten and forsaken.

"Oh, my God," she cried, "how can I bear it? All that I do is useless. I
may lie and cheat and plot as much as I like, but all my schemes are in
vain. I cannot hurt her, as she said: I cannot punish him: I have no
power left. No power, no beauty, no will! Am I losing my senses, too,
like Francis?" She shuddered at the thought. "Perhaps I am going
mad--they have driven me mad, Caspar Brooke and his wife, between
them--mad, mad, mad!--Oh, God," she said, with a long shivering sigh,
"Oh, God, avert _that_ doom! Not that punishment of all others, for
mercy's sake!"

She looked up and down her dimly lighted room with an expression upon
her face of horror and unrest, which bore some resemblance to the look
of one whose intellect was becoming unhinged. It seemed as if she were
afraid that something might leap out upon her from the darkness, or as
if goblin voices might at any moment mutter in her ear. For a long time
she stood motionless in the middle of the room, her eyes staring, her
hands hanging at her sides. Then she moved slowly to a writing-table,
took a sheet of paper and a pen, and wrote a few lines. When she had
finished she enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and addressed it to Lady
Alice Brooke. And when that was done she rang the bell and sent the
letter to the post. Then she nodded and smiled strangely to herself.

"Perhaps that will atone," she murmured vaguely. "And perhaps God will
not take away my reason, after all."

And then she began to fumble among the things upon her dressing-table
for the little bottle that contained her nightly sleeping draught.

* * * * *

Mrs. Romaine's letter was brought to Lady Alice before she rose next
morning. It contained these words:--

"I told you what was not true to-day. Your husband never asked me
to go away with him--he never cared for me. I loved him, that was
all. His