rica."

"Farewell."

CHAPTER XL

PEACE, PEACE--AND THERE IS NO PEACE!

If I may dare to hope that there are, among my readers who have
followed me with so much patience through this book, some sufficiently
interested in the heroine to desire information on what befell her in
her future lot, I should wish to give to them just a glimpse or two
into scenes as totally different from the events recorded in this
volume as night is from day. And to do this freely, unreservedly, I
must endeavour to forget my close connection with the heroine, a
connection the thought of which has hampered and restricted me, from
first to last, in choosing and rewriting the material from her diary.

Her diary, as I have said before, had ended soon after her last
adventure with the spies, never to be resumed again.

I do not, however, write from memory in this brief chapter on her
subsequent experiences, for I have before me for reference a pile of
letters from her to her mother.

Almost her last word when she left her native land was an injunction
to her mother to preserve her letters for the future,--"for when I am
married, mother dear, _you_ will be my diary."

Hansie's health gave way.

Not in a week or a month, not in any way perceptible to those around
her, but stealthily, treacherously, and relentlessly the fine
constitution was undermined, the highly strung nervous system was
shattered. This had taken place chiefly during the desolate and dark
hours of the night, when, helpless in the grip of the fiend Insomnia,
the wretched girl abandoned herself to hopelessness and despair.

And the time was soon to come when she feared those dreadful waking
hours even less than the brief moments of fitful slumber which
overcame her worn-out, shattered frame, for no sooner did she lose her
consciousness in sleep than she was overpowered by some hideous
nightmare, and found herself, shrieking, drowning in the black waters
of some raging torrent, or pursued by some infuriated lunatic or
murderer, or enveloped in the deadly coils of some hideous reptile.

Shuddering from head to foot after each of these most awful realities
of the night, she was soothed and comforted by the tender hands of her
distressed and anxious mother.

Something had to be done, of that there was no doubt. Not even the
strongest mind could have endured such a strain for any length of
time, and that Hansie's reason was preserved at all I put down to the
fact