shall never be afraid of them again."

Rachel did not answer.

She had long since realized that Hester, when in her normal condition,
saw things which she herself did not see. She had long since realized
that Hester always accepted as final the limit of vision of the person
she was with, but that that limit changed with every person she met.
Rachel had seen her adjust it to persons more short-sighted than
herself, with secret self-satisfaction, and then with sudden
bewilderment had heard Hester accept as a commonplace from some one else
what appeared to Rachel fantastic in the extreme. If Rachel had
considered her own mind as the measure of the normal of all other minds,
she could not have escaped the conclusion that Hester was a victim of
manifold delusions. But, fortunately for herself, she saw that most
ladders possessed more than the one rung on which she was standing.

"That is quite different, isn't it," said Hester, "from thinking Dr.
Brown is a gray wolf?"

"Quite different. That was an hallucination of fever. You see that for
yourself now that you have no fever."

"I see that, of course, now that I have no fever," repeated Hester, her
eyes widening. "But one hallucination quite as foolish as that is always
coming back, and I can't shake it off. The wolf was gone directly, but
this is just the same now I am better, only it gets worse and worse. I
have never spoken of it to any one, because I know it is so silly. But
Rachel--I have no fever now--and yet--I know you'll laugh at me--I laugh
at my own foolish self--and yet all the time I have a horrible feeling
that"--Hester's eyes had in them a terror that was hardly human--"that
my book is burned."

CHAPTER XLVII

The soul of thy brother is a dark forest. --_Russian Proverb_.

"A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between Hugh
St. John Scarlett, of Kenstone Manor, Shropshire, only son of the late
Lord Henry Scarlett, and Rachel, only child of the late Joshua Hopkins
West, of Birmingham."

* * * * *

This announcement appeared in the _Morning Post_ a few days after
Christmas, and aroused many different emotions in the breasts of those
who read it.

"She has done it to spite me," said Mr. Tristram to himself over his
morning rasher, in the little eating-house near his studio. "I knew
there was some one else in her mind when she refused me. I rather
thought it was that weedy fellow with t