the situation when Emily tells you
that he is like you, I can't be as sure as I should be of myself under
the same circumstances."

Walderhurst applied his monocle and gazed for some moments at the object
before him. He had not known that men experienced these curiously
unexplainable emotions at such times. He kept a strong hold on himself.

"Would you like to hold him?" inquired Lady Maria. She was conscious of
a benevolent effort to restrain the irony in her voice.

Lord Walderhurst made a slight movement backward.

"I--I should not know how," he said, and then felt angry at himself. He
desired to take the thing in his arms. He desired to feel its warmth. He
absolutely realised that if he had been alone with it, he should have
laid aside his eyeglass and touched its cheek with his lips.

Two days afterwards he was sitting by his wife's pillow, watching her
shut lids, when he saw them quiver and slowly move until they were wide
open. Her eyes looked very large in her colourless, more sharply
chiselled face. They saw him and him only, as light came gradually into
them. They did not move, but rested on him. He bent forward, almost
afraid to stir.

He spoke to her as he had spoken before.

"Emily!" very low, "Emily!"

Her voice was only a fluttering breath, but she answered.

"It--was--you!" she said.

Chapter Twenty four

Such individuals as had not already thought it expedient to gradually
loosen and drop the links of their acquaintance with Captain Alec Osborn
did not find, on his return to his duties in India, that the leave of
absence spent in England among his relatives had improved him. He was
plainly consuming enormous quantities of brandy, and was steadily going,
physically and mentally, to seed. He had put on flesh, and even his
always dubious good looks were rapidly deserting him. The heavy young
jowl looked less young and more pronounced, and he bore about an evil
countenance.

"Disappointment may have played the devil with him," it was said by an
elderly observer; "but he has played the devil with himself. He was a
wrong'un to begin with."

When Hester's people flocked to see her and hear her stories of exalted
life in England, they greeted her with exclamations of dismay. If Osborn
had lost his looks, she also had lost hers. She was yellow and haggard,
and her eyes looked over-grown. She had not improved in the matter of
temper, and answered all effusive questions with a dry, bitter