rs, sooner or later.'

'Of course. The day of reckoning must come. But in the meantime have you
no delicacy? Do you want to be pointed at everywhere?'

'All I know is that I am very ill,' answered her husband, 'and that this
wretched journey has made me twenty years older.'

'We shall be safe at home before noon to-morrow, and you can have Horton
to set you right again. You know you always believed in his skill.'

'Horton is a clever fellow enough, as country doctors go; but at
Hastings I could have had the best physicians in London to see me,'
grumbled his lordship.

The rustic maid-servant came in to lay the table, assisted by her
ladyship's footman, who looked a good deal too tall for the room.

'I shan't dine,' said the Earl. 'I am a great deal too ill and cold.
Light a fire in my room, girl, and send Steadman to me'--this to the
footman, who hastened to obey. 'You can send me up a basin of soup
presently. I shall go to bed at once.'

He left the room without another word to his wife, who sat by the hearth
staring thoughtfully at the cheery wood fire. Presently she looked up,
and saw that the man and maid were going on with their preparations for
dinner.

'I do not care about dining alone,' said her ladyship. 'We lunched at
Windermere, and I have no appetite. You can clear away those things, and
bring me some tea.'

When the table furniture had been cleared, and a neat little tea-tray
set upon the white cloth, Lady Maulevrier drew her chair to the table,
and took out her pocket-book, from which she produced a letter. This she
read more than once, meditating profoundly upon its contents.

'I am very sorry he has come home,' wrote her correspondent, 'and yet if
he had stayed in India there must have been an investigation on the
spot. A public inquiry is inevitable, and the knowledge of his arrival
in the country will precipitate matters. From all I hear I much fear
that there is no chance of the result being favourable to him. You have
asked me to write the unvarnished truth, to be brutal even, remember.
His delinquencies are painfully notorious, and I apprehend that the last
sixpence he owns will be answerable. His landed estate I am told can
also be confiscated, in the event of an impeachment at the bar of the
House of Lords, as in the Warren Hastings case. But as yet nobody seems
clear as to the form which the investigation will take. In reply to your
inquiry as to what would have happened if his lordshi