of cheerfulness, she was conscious of a certain degree of
discouragement. She had liked her so much, she had wanted to be friends
with her and to make her life an easier thing, and yet she appeared
somehow to have failed. It was because she was so far from being a
clever woman. Perhaps she might fail in other things because she was not
clever. Perhaps she was never able to give to people what they wanted,
what they needed. A brilliant woman had such power to gain and hold
love.

After an hour or so spent in trying to raise the mental temperature of
Mrs. Osborn's beflowered boudoir, she rose and picked up her little
work-basket.

"Perhaps you would take a nap if I left you," she said. "I think I will
stroll down to the lake."

She quietly stole away, leaving Hester on her cushions.

Chapter Seventeen

A few minutes later a knock at the door being replied to by Hester's
curt "Come in!" produced the modest entry of Jane Cupp, who had come to
make a necessary inquiry of her mistress. "Her ladyship is not here; she
has gone out." Jane made an altogether involuntary step forward. Her
face became the colour of her clean white apron.

"Out!" she gasped.

Hester turned sharply round.

"To the lake," she said. "What do you mean by staring in that way?"

Jane did not tell her what she meant. She incontinently ran from the
room without any shadow of a pretence at a lady's maid's decorum.

She fled through the rooms, to make a short cut to the door opening on
to the gardens. Through that she darted, and flew across paths and
flowerbeds towards the avenue of limes.

"She shan't get to the bridge before me," she panted. "She shan't, she
shan't. I won't let her. Oh, if my breath will only hold out!"

She did not reflect that gardeners would naturally think she had gone
mad. She thought of nothing whatever but the look in Ameerah's downcast
eyes when the servants had talked of the bottomless water,--the eerie,
satisfied, sly look. Of that, and of the rising of the white figure from
the ground last night she thought, and she clutched her neat side as she
ran.

The Lime Avenue seemed a mile long, and yet when she was running down it
she saw Lady Walderhurst walking slowly under the trees carrying her
touching little basket of sewing in her hand. She was close to the
bridge.

"My lady! my lady!" she gasped out as soon as she dared. She could not
run screaming all the way. "Oh, my lady! if you please!"

Emily heard