f
the seas of pain, without pain.

Then came sighs. The sad old servant in her bosom was resuming his
labours.

But she had been near it--very near it? A gush of pity for Victor,
overwhelmed her hardness of mind.

Unreflectingly, she tried her feet to support her, and tottered to
the door, touched along to the stairs, and descended them, thinking
strangely upon such a sudden weakness of body, when she would no longer
have thought herself the weak woman. Her aim was to reach the library.
She sat on the stairs midway, pondering over the length of her
journey: and now her head was clearer; for she was travelling to get
Railway-guides, and might have had them from the hands of a footman, and
imagined that she had considered it prudent to hide her investigation of
those books: proofs of an understanding fallen backward to the state of
infant and having to begin our drear ascent again.

A slam of the kitchen stair-door restored her. She betrayed no infirmity
of footing as she walked past Arlington in the hall; and she was alive
to the voice of Skepsey presently on the door-steps. Arlington brought
her a note.

Victor had written: 'My love, I dine with Blathenoy in the City, at the
Walworth. Business. Skepsey for clothes. Eight of us. Formal. A thousand
embraces. Late.'

Skepsey was ushered in. His wife had expired at noon, he said; and he
postured decorously the grief he could not feel, knowing that a lady
would expect it of him. His wife had fallen down stone steps; she died
in hospital. He wished to say, she was no loss to the country; but
he was advised within of the prudence of abstaining from comment
and trusting to his posture, and he squeezed a drop of conventional
sensibility out of it, and felt improved.

Nataly sent a line to Victor: 'Dearest, I go to bed early, am tired.
Dine well. Come to me in the morning.'

She reproached herself for coldness to poor Skepsey, when he had gone.
The prospect of her being alone until the morning had been so absorbing
a relief.

She found a relief also in work at the book of the trains. A walk to
the telegraph-station strengthened her. Especially after despatching
a telegram to Mr. Dudley Sowerby at Cronidge, and one to Nesta at
Moorsedge, did she become stoutly nerved. The former was requested to
meet her at Penhurst station at noon. Nesta was to be at the station for
the Wells at three o'clock.

From the time of the flying of these telegrams, up to the tap of
Victor