by a demon of restlessness which made it impossible for her to attend to
the same thing for two minutes together; but let Sterne enter the room,
and all the poor forces of her nature were rallied to appear calm and at
ease.

Meriel saw through these efforts with a woman's intuition; later on with
a woman's sympathy, for she knew that Geoffrey Sterne no longer loved
his wife. He was kindly, chivalrous, attentive; with the utmost of his
powers he fulfilled his duty, but there was no spark of that divine
flame which would have turned duty into joy. To have gained the love of
such a man, and then--to have lost it! Meriel found herself reversing
her former decision. She had believed Flora Sterne to be the happiest
of women. She now knew her to be the most unfortunate.

There was trouble in the air--a trouble nebulous and vague, yet real
enough to chill the blood. The cloud of coming disaster settled down
more and more heavily over the household. There came a night when the
storm broke.

Sterne had been away all day, and in his absence his wife's restlessness
took an acute turn. She wandered about the house rejecting irritably
all offers of help, and finally shut herself up in her own rooms,
leaving Meriel a prey to anxiety. What was the reason of Flora's
strange behaviour? Was it a pure matter of nerves, or was there in
truth some hidden sorrow preying upon her mind, and driving her hither
and thither in search of oblivion? What sorrow could Flora have? Grief
over the death of her child had long since faded into a placid
conclusion that all was for the best. It had been a dear little thing,
but children were a tie... She was glad there had been no other... For
the rest, life had brought her the most luxurious of homes, the most
attentive of husbands, and if that attention was not induced by the
highest motive, Meriel doubted if the dulled mind grasped the lack.
What sorrow, then, could Flora have?

The afternoon wore slowly away, until the hour approached when Sterne
would return, when a feeling of responsibility drove Meriel to follow
Flora to her boudoir. She did not wish Geoffrey to return to find his
wife suffering and alone.

The room was darkened, so that it was impossible to see distinctly, but
the sound of a low moan reached her ears, and prone on the sofa lay
Flora, her face sunk deep in the piled-up cushions.

Meriel spoke, but there was no reply; she knelt down and pressed the
cushion from