ing her submission to his will. Again
there came into her room, suddenly, and like a spectre, the awful
presence of Mrs. Hart, with her white face, her stern looks, her
sharp inquiries, and her ominous words. Again she pursued this woman
to her own room, in the dark, and ran her hands over the bed, and
found that bed empty.

But Lord Chetwynde was the central object of her delirious fancies.
It was to him that her thoughts reverted from brief wanderings over
reminiscences of Gualtier and Mrs. Hart. Whatever thoughts she might
have about these, those thoughts would always at last revert to him.
And with him it was not so much the past that suggested itself to her
diseased imagination as the future. That future was sufficiently dark
and terrible to be portrayed in fearful colors by her incoherent
ravings. There were whispered words--words of frightful meaning,
words which expressed those thoughts which in her sober senses she
would have died rather than reveal. Had any one been standing by her
bedside who knew English, he might have learned from her words a
story of fearful import--a tale which would have chilled his blood,
and which would have shown him how far different this sick woman was
from the fond, self-sacrificing wife, who had excited the sympathy of
all in the hotel. But there was none who could understand her. The
doctor knew no language beside his own, except a little French; the
maids knew nothing but German. And so it was that while Hilda
unconsciously revealed the whole of those frightful secrets which she
carried shut up within her breast, that revelation was not
intelligible to any of those who were in contact with her. Well was
it for her at that time that she had chosen to come away without her
maid; for had that maid been with her then she would have learned
enough of her mistress to send her flying back to England in horror,
and to publish abroad the awful intelligence.

Thus a week passed--a week of delirium, of ravings, of incoherent
speeches, unintelligible to all those by whom she was surrounded. At
length her strong constitution triumphed over the assaults of
disease. The fever was allayed, and sense returned; and with
returning sense there came the full consciousness of her position.
The one purpose of her life rose again within her mind, and even
while she was too weak to move she was eager to be up and away.

"How long will it be," she asked of the doctor, "before I can go on
my journey?"