up to her room and tenderly put to
bed. The landlord was an honest, tender-hearted German. Lord
Chetwynde had been a guest of sufficient distinction to be well
remembered by a landlord, and his ill health had made him more
conspicuous. The arrival of this devoted wife, who herself seemed as
ill as her husband, but who yet, in spite of weakness, was hastening
to him with such a consuming desire to get to him, affected most
profoundly this honest landlord, and all others in the hotel. That
evening, then, Hilda's faith and love and constancy formed the chief
theme of conversation; the visitors of the hotel heard the sad story
from the landlord, and deep was the pity, and profound the sympathy,
which were expressed by all. To the ordinary pathos of this affecting
example of conjugal love some additional power was lent by the
extreme beauty, the excessive prostration and grief, and, above all,
the illustrious rank of this devoted woman.

Hilda was put to bed, but there was no sleep for her. The fever of
her anxiety, the shock of her disappointment, the tumult of her hopes
and fears, all made themselves felt in her overworked brain. She did
not take the five o'clock train on the following day. The maid came
to call her, but found her in a high fever, eager to start, but quite
unable to move. Before noon she was delirious.

In that delirium her thoughts wandered over those scenes which for
the past few months had been uppermost in her mind. Now she was shut
up in her chamber at Chetwynde Castle reading the Indian papers; she
heard the roll of carriage wheels; she prepared to meet the new-comer
face to face. She followed him to the morning-room, and there
listened to his fierce maledictions. On the occasion itself she had
been dumb before him, but in her delirium she had words of
remonstrance. These words were expressed in every varying shade of
entreaty, deprecation, conciliation, and prayer. Again she watched a
stern, forbidding face over the dinner-table, and sought to appease
by kind words the just wrath of the man she loved. Again she held out
her hand, only to have her humble advances repelled in coldest scorn.
Again she saw him leave her forever without a word of
farewell--without even a notice of his departure, and she remained to
give herself up to vengeance.

That delirium carried her through many past events. Gualtier again
stood up before her in rebellion, proud, defiant, merciless,
asserting himself, and enforc