is breath. He touched his
cap and looked blankly at Lady Walderhurst. Jane's heart seemed to
herself to roll over. She scarcely dared look at her mistress, but when
she took courage to do so, she found her so white that she hurried to
her side.

"Thank you, Jane," she said rather faintly. "The sky is so lovely this
afternoon that I meant to stop and look at it. I should have fallen into
the water, which they say has no bottom. No one would have seen or heard
me if you had not come."

She caught Jane's hand and held it hard. Her eyes wandered over the
avenue of big trees, which no one but herself came near at this hour. It
would have been so lonely, so lonely!

The gardener went away, still looking less ruddy than he had looked when
he arrived on the spot. Lady Walderhurst rose from her seat on the mossy
tree-trunk. She rose quite slowly.

"Don't speak to me yet, Jane," she said. And with Jane following her at
a respectful distance, she returned to the house and went to her room to
lie down.

There was nothing to prove that the whole thing was not mere chance,
mere chance. It was this which turned her cold. It was all impossible.
The little bridge had been entirely unused for so long a time, it had
been so slight a structure from the first; it was old, and she
remembered now that Walderhurst had once said that it must be examined
and strengthened if it was to be used. She had leaned upon the rail
often lately; one evening she had wondered if it seemed quite as steady
as usual. What could she say, whom could she accuse, because a piece of
rotten wood had given away.

She started on her pillow. It was a piece of rotten wood which had
fallen from the balustrade upon the stairs, to be seen and picked up by
Jane just before she would have passed down on her way to dinner. And
yet, what would she appear to her husband, to Lady Maria, to anyone in
the decorous world, if she told them that she believed that in a
dignified English household, an English gentleman, even a deposed heir
presumptive, was working out a subtle plot against her such as might
adorn a melodrama? She held her head in her hands as her mind depicted
to her Lord Walderhurst's countenance, Lady Maria's dubious, amused
smile.

"She would think I was hysterical," she cried, under her breath. "He
would think I was vulgar and stupid, that I was a fussy woman with
foolish ideas, which made him ridiculous. Captain Os-born is of his
family. I should be accus