ay and year after
year by unknown hands. She liked to sit and listen, and even felt a
little elated when the engaged couple, after showing their profound lack
of interest, slipped from the room, and were seen pulling flowers to
pieces in the garden. It was not that she was jealous of them, but she
did undoubtedly envy them their great unknown future that lay before
them. Slipping from one such thought to another, she was at the
dining-room with fruit in her hands. Sometimes she stopped to straighten
a candle stooping with the heat, or disturbed some too rigid arrangement
of the chairs. She had reason to suspect that Chailey had been balancing
herself on the top of a ladder with a wet duster during their absence,
and the room had never been quite like itself since. Returning from the
dining-room for the third time, she perceived that one of the arm-chairs
was now occupied by St. John. He lay back in it, with his eyes half
shut, looking, as he always did, curiously buttoned up in a neat grey
suit and fenced against the exuberance of a foreign climate which might
at any moment proceed to take liberties with him. Her eyes rested on
him gently and then passed on over his head. Finally she took the chair
opposite.

"I didn't want to come here," he said at last, "but I was positively
driven to it. . . . Evelyn M.," he groaned.

He sat up, and began to explain with mock solemnity how the detestable
woman was set upon marrying him.

"She pursues me about the place. This morning she appeared in the
smoking-room. All I could do was to seize my hat and fly. I didn't want
to come, but I couldn't stay and face another meal with her."

"Well, we must make the best of it," Helen replied philosophically. It
was very hot, and they were indifferent to any amount of silence, so
that they lay back in their chairs waiting for something to happen. The
bell rang for luncheon, but there was no sound of movement in the house.
Was there any news? Helen asked; anything in the papers? St. John shook
his head. O yes, he had a letter from home, a letter from his mother,
describing the suicide of the parlour-maid. She was called Susan Jane,
and she came into the kitchen one afternoon, and said that she wanted
cook to keep her money for her; she had twenty pounds in gold. Then she
went out to buy herself a hat. She came in at half-past five and said
that she had taken poison. They had only just time to get her into bed
and call a doctor before she