he day, in which she did not pay some penalty for the past
by a thousand anxieties. To look forward to such a thing as this was
one thing; but to be here, where she had so often longed to be, was
quite another thing. It was the hackneyed fable of Damocles with the
sword over his head over again. She was standing on treacherous
ground, which at any moment might give way beneath her feet and
plunge her in an abyss of ruin. To live thus face to face with
possible destruction, to stare death in the face every day, was not a
thing conducive either to mildness or to tenderness in any nature,
much less in one like hers.

In that boudoir where she spent so much of her time, while her maid
wondered how she employed herself, her occupation consisted of but
one thing. It was the examination of papers, followed by deep thought
over the result of that examination. Every mail brought to her
address newspapers both from home and abroad. Among the latter were a
number of Indian papers, published in various places, including some
that were printed in remote towns in the north. There were the Delhi
_Gazette_, the Allahabad _News_, and the Lahore _Journal_, all of
which were most diligently scanned by her. Next to these were the
_Times_ and the _Army and Navy Gazette_. No other papers or books, or
prints of any kind, had any interest in her eyes.

It was natural that her thoughts should thus refer to India. All her
plans had succeeded, as far as she could know, and, finally, she had
remodeled the household at Chetwynde in such a way that not one
remained who could by any possibility know about the previous
inmates. She was here as Lady Chetwynde, the lady of Chetwynde
Castle, ruler over a great estate, mistress of a place that might
have excited the envy of any one in England, looked up to with awful
reverence by her dependents, and in the possession of every luxury
that wealth could supply. But still the sword was suspended over her
head, and by a single hair--a sword that at any moment might fall.
What could she know about the intentions of Lord Chetwynde all this
time? What were his plans or purposes? Was it not possible, in spite
of her firmly expressed convictions to the contrary, that he might
come back again to England? And then what? Then--ah! that was the
thing beyond which it was difficult for her imagination to go--the
crisis beyond which it was impossible to tell what the future might
unfold. It was a moment which she was ev