her changes would be made. This much Gualtier
managed to communicate to them, so as to give them some tangible idea
of the affairs of the family and prevent idle conjecture. He let them
know, also, that Lord Chetwynde was in India, and might come home at
any moment, though his engagements there were so important that it
might be impossible for him to leave.

After a few days Lady Chetwynde arrived at the Castle, and was
greeted with respectful curiosity by all within the house. Her cold
and aristocratic bearing half repelled them, half excited their
admiration. She was very beautiful, and her high breeding was evident
in her manner; but there was about her such frigidity and such
loftiness of demeanor that it repelled those who would have been
willing to give her their love. She brought a maid with her who had
only been engaged a short time previously; and it was soon known that
the maid stood in great awe of her mistress, who was haughty and
exacting, and who shut herself off altogether from any of those
attempts at respectful sympathy which some kind-hearted lady's-maids
might be inclined to show. The whole household soon shared in this
feeling; for the lady of the Castle showed herself rigid in her
requirements of duty and strict in her rule, while, at the same time,
she made her appearance but seldom. She never visited Mrs. Hart, but
once or twice made some cold inquiries about her of the housekeeper.
She also gave out that she would not receive any visitors--a
precautionary measure that was not greatly needed; for Chetwynde
Castle was remote from the seats of the county families, and any
changes there would not be known among them for some time.

The lady of the Castle spent the greater part of her time in her
boudoir, alone, never tolerating the presence of even her maid except
when it was absolutely necessary, but requiring her to be always near
in case of any need for her presence arising. The maid attributed
this strange seclusion to the effects of grief over her recent
bereavement, or perhaps anxiety about her husband; while the other
servants soon began to conjecture that her husband's absence arose
from some quarrel with a wife whose haughty and imperious demeanor
they all had occasion to feel.

It was thus, then, that Hilda had entered upon her new and perilous
position, to attain to which she had plotted so deeply and dared so
much. Now that she had attained it, there was not an hour, not a
moment of t