ery great extent
set up her in strength. She wrote but one letter during her absence,
and that was to say that she should be back in London by midday on the
first of May. This letter reached Philip on the morning of the great
dinner-party, and was either accidentally or on purpose sent without
the writer's address. On the morning of the first of May--that is, two
days after the dinner-party, which was given on the twenty-ninth of
April--Hilda rose early, and commenced to pack her things with the
assistance of a stout servant girl, who did all the odd jobs and a
great deal of the work in the old-fashioned farmhouse in which she was
staying. Presently the cowboy came whistling up the little garden,
bright with crocuses and tulips, that lay in front of the house, and
knocked at the front door.

"Lawks!" said the stout girl, in accents of deep surprise, as she drew
her head in from the open lattice; "Jim's got a letter."

"Perhaps it is for me," suggested Hilda, a little nervously; she had
grown nervous about the post of late. "Will you go and see?"

The letter was for her, in the handwriting of Mrs. Jacobs. She opened
it; it contained another addressed in the character the sight of which
made her feel sick and faint. She could not trust herself to read it
in the presence of the girl.

"Sally," she said, "I feel rather faint; I shall lie down a little. I
will ring for you presently."

Sally retired, and she opened her letter.

Fifteen minutes after the girl received her summons. She found Hilda
very pale, and with a curious look upon her face.

"I hope you're better, mum," she said, for she was a kind-hearted
girl.

"Better--ah, yes! thank you, Sally; I am cured, quite cured; but
please be quick with the things, for I shall leave by the nine o'clock
train."

CHAPTER X

The night of the dinner-party was a nearly sleepless one for Philip,
although his father had so considerately regretted his wearied
appearance, he could do nothing but walk, walk, walk, like some
unquiet ghost, up and down his great, oak-panelled bedroom, till,
about dawn, his legs gave way beneath him; and think, think, think,
till his mind recoiled, confused and helpless, from the dead wall of
its objects. And, out of all this walking and thinking, there emerged,
after an hour of stupor, that it would be a misnomer to call sleep,
two fixed results. The first of these was that he hated his father as
a lost soul