st hurried visit was ended, she drove home, completely
unnerved. Her black veil was lowered before her face, and though she
sat erect and composed to outward seeming, the tears rained down her
cheeks.

Her remaining days at Kingdon Hall were spent in a state of such
listlessness and inertia that Nora began to fear that she was going
to be ill. She urged her mistress to send for the doctor; but, for
answer, Bettina burst into tears, declaring that she was not ill, and
begging Nora to do everything for her that was necessary to get her
off on the steamer on which she had taken passage, as she felt unable
to do anything herself.

How the intervening hours passed she never knew; but, as if taking
part in a dream, she went through them all, and at last found herself
settled in her state-room, with Nora to take care of her, and no one
to spy on her or notice what she did. Asking Nora, as piteously as a
child, to help her to undress, she went to bed, and from that bed she
did not rise until the ship had touched another shore, and the
breadth of the world lay between herself and Horace.

How glad she would have been to lie there and sail on forever, freed
from her responsibility to the future, as she was from that to the
past!

CHAPTER XV

It was when Bettina was a matter of three hours out at sea that Lord
Hurdly arrived at Kingdon Hall, and, on being admitted, ordered the
servant to say to Lady Hurdly that he wished to see her. His surprise
was great when the man informed him that Lady Hurdly had that day
sailed for America.

Dismissing the servant, he went to the library and shut himself up
there alone. How strangely was this house altered to him in one
moment's time! Just now he had felt a presence in it which had made
every atom of it significant. Now, how dead, empty, meaningless, it
had suddenly become!

The effect of this change was almost startling to him, and for the
first time he had the courage to face himself and to demand of his
own soul an explanation.

He was a man of a peculiarly uncomplex nature. When, on meeting
Bettina, he for the first time fell deeply in love, he had looked
upon the matter as a finality, and he had never ceased so to regard
it. When she deserted him, without giving him a chance to speak, he
had, in the overwhelming bitterness of his heart, forsworn all women.
It had never occurred to him to put another in Bettina's place. For a
long time a passionate resentment possesse