is mind, promptly rang the bell.

In another minute the door had closed behind him and she was left
alone.

CHAPTER XXIV

"GOOD-BYE, MY DEAR, GOOD-BYE!"

When Edward Cossey had gone, Ida rose and put her hands to her head.
So the blow had fallen, the deed was done, and she was engaged to be
married to Edward Cossey. And Harold Quaritch! Well, there must be an
end to that. It was hard, too--only a woman could know how hard. Ida
was not a person with a long record of love affairs. Once, when she
was twenty, she had received a proposal which she had refused, and
that was all. So it happened that when she became attached to Colonel
Quaritch she had found her heart for the first time, and for a woman,
somewhat late in life. Consequently her feelings were all the more
profound, and so indeed was her grief at being forced not only to put
them away, but to give herself to another man who was not agreeable to
her. She was not a violent or ill-regulated woman like Mrs. Quest. She
looked facts in the face, recognised their meaning and bowed before
their inexorable logic. It seemed to her almost impossible that she
could hope to avoid this marriage, and if that proved to be so, she
might be relied upon to make the best of it. Scandal would, under any
circumstances, never find a word to say against Ida, for she was not a
person who could attempt to console herself for an unhappy marriage.
But it was bitter, bitter as gall, to be thus forced to turn aside
from her happiness--for she well knew that with Harold Quaritch her
life would be very happy--and fit her shoulders to this heavy yoke.
Well, she had saved the place to her father, and also to her
descendants, if she had any, and that was all that could be said.

She thought and thought, wishing in the bitterness of her heart that
she had never been born to come to such a heavy day, till at last she
could think no more. The air of the room seemed to stifle her, though
it was by no means overheated. She went to the window and looked out.
It was a wild wet evening, and the wind drove the rain before it in
sheets. In the west the lurid rays of the sinking sun stained the
clouds blood red, and broke in arrows of ominous light upon the
driving storm.

But bad as was the weather, it attracted Ida. When the heart is heavy
and torn by conflicting passions, it seems to answer to the calling of
the storm, and to long to lose its pett