ittle to the right or left of where she had last seen it. It was the
face that was now buried in her very soul, and sometimes it passed out
of the sky into the morning mist, which still heaved about the edges of
the woods; and there she saw something grovelling, crouching,
crawling,--a wild beast, or was it a man?

She did not weep, nor did she moan. She sat thinking. She dwelt on the
remembrance of the hills and the tramp with strange persistency, and yet
no more now than before did she attempt to come to conclusions with her
thought; it was vague, she would not define it; she brooded over it
sullenly and obtusely. Sometimes her thoughts slipped away from it, but
with each returning, a fresh stage was marked in the progress of her
nervous despair.

So the hours went by. At eight o'clock the maid knocked at the door.
Kitty opened it mechanically, and she fell into the woman's arms,
weeping and sobbing passionately. The sight of the female face brought
infinite relief; it interrupted the jarred and strained sense of the
horrible; the secret affinities of sex quickened within her. The woman's
presence filled Kitty with the feelings that the harmlessness of a lamb
or a soft bird inspires.

CHAPTER VIII.

"But what is it, Miss, what is it? Are you ill? Why, Miss, you haven't
taken your things off; you haven't been to bed."

"No, I lay down.... I have had frightful dreams--that is all."

"But you must be ill, Miss; you look dreadful, Miss. Shall I tell Mr
Hare? Perhaps the doctor had better be sent for."

"No, no; pray say nothing about me. Tell my father that I did not sleep,
that I am going to lie down for a little while, that he is not to expect
me down for breakfast."

"I really think, Miss, that it would be as well for you to see the
doctor."

"No, no, no. I am going to lie down, and I am not to be disturbed."

"Shall I fill the bath, Miss? Shall I leave hot water here, Miss?"

"Bath.... Hot water...." Kitty repeated the words over as if she were
striving to grasp a meaning which was suggested, but which eluded her.
Then her face relaxed, the expression was one of pitiful despair, and
that expression gave way to a sense of nausea, expressed by a quick
contraction of the eyes.

She listened to the splashing of the water, and its echoes were repeated
indefinably through her soul.

The maid left the room. Kitty's attention was attracted to her dress. It
was torn, it was muddy, there were bits of fur