iss Timson would come as soon as possible,
lay crumpled up at the bottom of the punt.

The serpent was there, but Goring did not allow its peeping coils
thoroughly to chill his roses. His temperament was too sanguine, he felt
too completely steeped in happiness, the weather was too beautiful. Most
likely Mildred would be all right to-morrow.

Meantime, up there in the shaded room, she who had been Mildred began to
stir in her sleep. She opened her eyes and gazed through the square
window, at the sunlit awning that overhung it, and at the green leaves
and pale buds of the Gloire-de-Dijon rose. There was a hum of bees close
by that seemed like the voice of the hot sunshine. It should have been a
pleasant awakening, but Milly awoke from that long sleep of hers with a
brooding sense of misfortune. The remembrance of the afternoon when she
had so suddenly been snatched away returned to her, but it was not the
revelation of Ian's passionate love for her supplanter that came back to
her as the thing of most importance. Surely she must have known that
long before, for now the pain seemed old and dulled from habit. It was
the terrible strength with which the Evil Spirit had possessed her,
seizing her channels of speech even while she was still there, hurling
her from her seat without waiting for the passivity of sleep. No, her
sense of misfortune was not altogether, or even mainly, connected with
that last day of hers. Unlike Mildred, she had up till now been without
any consciousness of things that had occurred during her quiescence, and
she had now no vision; only a strong impression that something terrible
had befallen Ian.

She looked around the bedroom, and it seemed to her very strange;
something like an hotel room, yet at once too sumptuous and too shabby.
There was a faded pink flock wall-paper with a gilt pattern upon it, the
chairs were gilded and padded and covered with worn pink damask, the bed
was gilded and hung with faded pink silk curtains. Everywhere there was
pink and gilding, and everywhere it was old and faded and rubbed. A few
early Victorian lithographs hung on the walls, portraits of
ballet-dancers and noblemen with waists and whiskers. No one had tidied
the room since the night before, and fine underclothing was flung
carelessly about on chairs, a fussy petticoat here, the bodice of an
evening dress there; everywhere just that touch of mingled daintiness
and disorder which by this time Milly recognized