t it could be felt as a faint,
distinct concussion; and she had thus noted every hour, except four
o'clock, when daylight had come and the street lamp had been put out.
She had deliberately feigned sleep as Louis entered the room, and had
maintained the soft, regular breathing of a sleeper until long after
he was in bed. She did not wish to talk; she could not have talked
with any safety.

Her brain was occupied much by the strange and emotional episode of
Julian's confession, but still more by the situation of her husband in
the affair. Julian's story had precisely corroborated one part of Mrs.
Maldon's account of her actions on the evening when the bank-notes had
disappeared. Little by little that recital of Mrs. Maldon's had been
discredited, and at length cast aside as no more important than the
delirium of a dying creature; it was an inconvenient story, and would
only fit in with the alternative theories that money had wings and
could fly on its own account, or that there had been thieves in
the house. Far easier to assume that Mrs. Maldon in some lapse had
unwittingly done away with the notes! But Mrs. Maldon was now suddenly
reinstated as a witness. And if one part of her evidence was true, why
should not the other part be true? Her story was that she had put the
remainder of the bank-notes on the chair on the landing, and then (she
thought) in the wardrobe. Rachel recalled clearly all that she had
seen and all that she had been told. She remembered once more the
warnings that had been addressed to her. She lived the evening and
the night of the theft over again, many times, monotonously, and with
increasing woe and agitation.

Then with the greenish dawn, that the blinds let into the room, came
some refreshment and new health to the brain, but the trend of
her ideas was not modified. She lay on her side and watched the
unconscious Louis for immense periods, and occasionally tears
filled her eyes. The changes in her existence seemed so swift and so
tremendous as to transcend belief. Was it conceivable that only twelve
hours earlier she had been ecstatically happy? In twelve hours--in six
hours--she had aged twenty years, and she now saw the Rachel of
the reception and of the bicycle lesson as a young girl, touchingly
ingenuous, with no more notion of danger than a baby.

At six o'clock she arose. Already she had formed the habit of arising
before Louis, and had reconciled herself to the fact that Louis had to