truth, your own behaviour is beginning to raw me."

With my husband's departure my triumphal course seemed to come to a
close. Left alone with Alma, I became as weak and irresolute as before
and began to brood upon Price's warning.

My maid had found a fierce delight in my efforts to assert myself as
mistress in my husband's house, but now (taking her former advantage)
she was for ever harping upon my foolishness in allowing Alma to remain
in it.

"She's deceiving you, my lady," said Price. "_Her_ waiting for a steamer
indeed! Not a bit of her. If your ladyship will not fly out at me again
and pack me off bag and baggage, I'll tell you what's she's waiting
for."

"What?"

"She's waiting for . . . she thinks . . . she fancies . . . well, to
tell you the honest truth, my lady, the bad-minded thing suspects that
something is going to happen to your ladyship, and she's just waiting
for the chance of telling his lordship."

I began to feel ill. A dim, vague, uneasy presentiment of coming trouble
took frequent possession of my mind.

I tried to suppress it. I struggled to strangle it as an ugly monster
created by the nervous strain I had been going through, and for a time I
succeeded in doing so. I had told Martin that nothing would happen
during his absence, and I compelled myself to believe that nothing would
or could.

Weeks passed; the weather changed; the golden hue of autumn gave place
to a chilly greyness; the sky became sad with winterly clouds; the land
became soggy with frequent rains; the trees showed their bare black
boughs; the withered leaves drifted along the roads before blustering
winds that came up from the sea; the evenings grew long and the mornings
dreary; but still Alma, with her mother, remained at Castle Raa.

I began to be afraid of her. Something of the half-hypnotic spell which
she had exercised over me when I was a child asserted itself again, but
now it seemed to me to be always evil and sometimes almost demoniacal.

I had a feeling that she was watching me day and night. Occasionally,
when she thought I was looking down, I caught the vivid gaze of her
coal-black eyes looking across at me through her long sable-coloured
eyelashes.

Her conversation was as sweet and suave as ever, but I found myself
creeping away from her and even shrinking from her touch.

More than once I remembered what Martin in his blunt way had said of
her: "I hate that woman; she's like a snake; I want to put