so swiftly.

At last she slept, distressed and worn out with thought.

Chapter XXXII

For the first time in her life, when the bright sun shone into her
room, Beatrice turned her face to the wall and dreaded the sight of
day. The post-bag would leave the hall at nine in the morning--Hugh
would have the letter at noon. Until then she was safe.

Noon came and went, but the length of the summer's day brought nothing
save fresh misery. At every unusual stir, every loud peal of the bell,
every quick footstep, she turned pale, and her heart seemed to die
within her.

Lady Earle watched her with anxious eyes. She could not understand the
change that had come over the brilliant young girl who had used to be
the life of the house. Every now and then she broke out into wild
feverish gayety. Lillian saw that something ailed her sister--she
could not tell what.

For the fiftieth time that day, when the hall door bell sounded,
Beatrice looked up with trembling lips she vainly tried to still. At
last Lady Earle took the burning hands in her own.

"My dear child," she said, "you will have a nervous fever if you go on
in this way. What makes you start at every noise? You look as though
you were waiting for something dreadful to happen."

"No one ever called me nervous," replied Beatrice, with a smile,
controlling herself with an effort; "mamma's chief complaint against me
was that I had no nerves;" adding presently to herself: "This can not
last. I would rather die at once that live in this agony."

The weary day came to a close, however, and it was well for Beatrice
that Lord Airlie had not spent it with her. The gentlemen at
Earlescourt had all gone to a bachelor's dinner, given by old Squire
Newton of the Grange. It was late when they returned, and Lord Airlie
did not notice anything unusual in Beatrice.

"I call this a day wasted," he said, as he bade her goodnight; "for it
has been a day spent away from you. I thought it would never come to
an end."

She sighed, remembering what a dreary day it had been to her. Could she
live through such another? Half the night she lay awake, wondering if
Hugh's answer to her letter would come by the first post, and whether
Lord Earle would say anything if he noticed another letter from
Brookfield. Fortune favored her. In the morning Lord Earle was deeply
engrossed by a story Lionel was telling, and asked Beatrice to open the
bag for him. She again saw a hated bl