ess to prevent
their collapse as a child is to support a falling tree; that the only
power left me is the power of vengeance--vengeance on my own son. I
have lived too long, and the dregs of life are bitter."

CHAPTER IX

Poor Hilda found life in her London lodging anything but cheerful, and
frequently begged Philip to allow her to settle somewhere in the
country. This, however, he refused to do on two grounds: in the first
place, because few country villages would be so convenient for him to
get at as London; and in the second, because he declared that the
great city was the safest hiding-place in the world.

And so Hilda continued perforce to live her lonesome existence, that
was only cheered by her husband's short and uncertain visits. Friends
she had none, nor did she dare to make any. The only person whose
conversation she could rely on to relieve the tedium of the long weeks
was her landlady, Mrs. Jacobs, the widow of a cheesemonger, who had
ruined a fine business by his drinking and other vicious propensities,
and out of a good property had only left his wife the leasehold of a
house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which, fortunately for her, had been
settled upon her at her marriage. Like most people who have seen
better days--not but what she was now very comfortably off--she
delighted in talking of her misfortunes, and of the perfidiousness of
man; and in Hilda, who had, poor girl, nothing else to listen to, she
found a most attentive audience. As was only natural where such a
charming person and such a good listener were concerned, honest Mrs.
Jacobs soon grew fond of her interesting lodger, about whose husband's
circumstances and history she soon wove many an imaginary tale; for,
needless to say, her most pertinent inquiries failed to extract much
information from Hilda. One of her favourite fictions was that her
lodger was the victim of her handsome husband, who had in some way
beguiled her from her home beyond the seas, in order to keep her in
solitary confinement and out of the reach of a hated rival. Another,
that he kept her thus that he might have greater liberty for his own
actions.

In course of time these ideas took such possession of her mind that
she grew to believe in them, and, when speaking of Hilda to any of her
other lodgers, would shake her head and talk of her mysteriously as a
"lamb" and a "victim."

As for that lady herself, whilst far from suspecting her