on. When the day was bright and sunny her
couch was placed near the window: and when the day was dull and grey the
couch was drawn close to the low hearth, which flashed and glittered
with brightly coloured tiles and artistic brass.

To-day the sky was dull, and the velvet couch stood beside the hearth.
Halcott sat at work in the adjoining bed-chamber, and came in every now
and then to replenish the fire: a footman was always on duty in the
corridor. A spring bell stood among the elegant trifles upon her
ladyship's table; and the lightest touch of her left hand upon the bell
brought her attendants to her side. She resolutely refused to have any
one sitting with her all day long. Solitude was a necessity of her
being, she told Mr. Horton, when he recommended that she should have
some one always in attendance upon her.

As the weeks wore on her features had been restored to their proud, calm
beauty, her articulation was almost as clear as of old: yet, now and
then, there would be a sudden faltering, the tongue and lips would
refuse their office, or she would forget a word, or use a wrong word
unconsciously. But there was no recovery of power or movement on that
side of the body which had been stricken. The paralysed limbs were still
motionless, lifeless as marble; and it was clear that Mr. Horton had
begun to lose heart about his patient. There was nothing obscure in the
case, but the patient's importance made the treatment a serious matter,
and the surgeon begged to be allowed to summon Sir William Jenner.

This, however, Lady Maulevrier refused.

'I don't want any fuss made about me,' she said. 'I am content to trust
myself to your skill, and I beg that no other doctor may be summoned.'

Mr. Horton understood his patient's feelings on this point. She had a
sense of humiliation in her helplessness, and, like some wounded animal
that crawls to its covert to die, she would fain have hidden her misery
from the eye of strangers. She had allowed no one, not even Maulevrier,
to be informed of the nature of her illness.

'It will be time enough for him to know all about me when he comes
here,' she said. 'I shall be obliged to see him whenever he does come.'

Maulevrier had spent Christmas and New Year in Paris, Mr. Hammond still
his companion. Her ladyship commented upon this with a touch of scorn.

'Mr. Hammond is like the Umbra you were reading about the other day in
Lord Lytton's "Last Days of Pompeii,"' she said to M