used or blamed."

Emily gasped for breath, and lifted her head as if to raise it above the
wall which was being slowly built round her.

"Nothing will be done which can be proved," said Hester Osborn. "I have
lived among native people, and know. If Ameerah hated me and I could not
get rid of her I should die, and it would all seem quite natural."

She bent down and picked up the empty glass from the carpet.

"It is a good thing it did not break," she said, as she put it on the
tray. "Ameerah will think you drank the milk and that nothing will hurt
you. You escape them always. She will be frightened."

As she said it she began to cry a little, like a child.

"Nothing will save _me_," she said. "I shall have to go back, I shall
have to go back!"

"No, no!" cried Emily.

The girl swept away her tears with the back of a clenched hand.

"At first, when I hated you," she was even petulant and plaintively
resentful, "I thought I could let it go on. I watched, and watched, and
bore it. But the strain was too great. I broke down. I think I broke
down one night, when something began to beat like a pulse against my
side."

Emily got up and stood before her. She looked perhaps rather as she had
looked when she rose and stood before the Marquis of Walderhurst on a
memorable occasion, the afternoon on the moor. She felt almost quiet,
and safe.

"What must I do?" she asked, as if she was speaking to a friend. "I am
afraid. Tell me."

Little Mrs. Osborn stood still and stared at her. The most incongruous
thought came to her mind. She found herself, at this weird moment,
observing how well the woman held her stupid head, how finely it was set
on her shoulders, and that in a modern Royal Academy way she was rather
like the Venus of Milo. It is quite out of place to think such things at
such a time. But she found herself confronted with them.

"Go away," she answered. "It is all like a thing in a play, but I know
what I am talking about. Say you are ordered abroad. Be cool and
matter-of-fact. Simply go and hide yourself somewhere, and call your
husband home as soon as he can travel."

Emily Walderhurst passed her hand over her forehead.

"It _is_ like something in a play," she said, with a baffled, wondering
face. "It isn't even respectable."

Hester began to laugh.

"No, it isn't even respectable," she cried. And her laughter was just in
time. The door opened and Alec Osborn came in.

"What isn't respectable?" he a