e she opened it. It
looked like a beautiful, long letter. It was quite thick.

But when she had opened it, she saw that the letter itself was not very
long. Several extra sheets of notes or instructions, it did not matter
what, seemed to be enclosed. Her hand shook so that she let them fall on
the floor. She looked so agitated that Jane was afraid to do more than
retire discreetly and stand outside the door.

In a few minutes she congratulated herself on the wisdom of not having
gone downstairs. She heard a troubled exclamation of wonder, and then a
call for herself.

"Jane, please, Jane!"

Lady Walderhurst was still sitting upon the sofa, but she looked pale
and unsteady. The letter was in her hand, which rested weakly in her
lap. It seemed as if she was so bewildered that she felt helpless.

She spoke in a tired voice.

"Jane," she said, "I think you will have to get me a glass of wine. I
don't think I am going to faint, but I do feel so--so upset."

Jane was at her side kneeling by her.

"Please, my lady, lie down," she begged. "Please do."

But she did not lie down. She sat trembling and looking at the girl in a
pathetic, puzzled fashion.

"I don't think," she quavered, "that his lordship can have received my
letter. He can't have received it. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't
say one word--"

She had been too healthy a woman to be subject to attacks of nerves. She
had never fainted before in her life, and as she spoke she did not at
all understand why Jane seemed to move up and down, and darkness came on
suddenly in the middle of the morning.

Jane managed by main strength to keep her from falling from the sofa,
and thanked Providence for the power vouchsafed to her. She reached the
bell and rang it violently, and hearing it, Mrs. Cupp came upstairs with
heavy swiftness.

Chapter Twenty one

Naturally a perceptive and closely reasoning woman, Mrs. Warren's close
intellectual intimacy with her husband had, in giving her the benefit of
intercourse with a wide experience, added greatly to her power of
reasoning by deduction. Warren frequently felt that his talk with her
was something like consultation with a specially clever and sympathetic
professional confrere. Her suggestions or conclusions were invariably
worth consideration. More than once his reflection upon them had led him
to excellent results. She made one night a suggestion with regard to the
Extraordinary Case which struck him as