ural woman
taken in adultery, lie down, groaning and stunned, under the pelting of
the stones of those who had not sinned, became to her, as the hours
dragged on, an atonement more and more imperative.

But the second odd fact she had to contemplate was the difficulty of
getting a new mode of life into operation. Notwithstanding all her
eagerness to pay, the days were still passing in gentle routine
somewhat quietly because of her father's indisposition, but with the
usual household dignity. There was a clock-work smoothness about life at
Tory Hill, due to the most competent service secured at the greatest
expense. Old servants, and plenty of them, kept the wheels going
noiselessly even while they followed with passionate interest the drama
being played in the other part of the house. To break in on the course
of their duties, to disturb them, or put a stop to them, was to Olivia
like an attempt to counteract the laws that regulate the sunrise. She
knew neither how to set about it nor where to begin. There was something
poignant in the irony of these unobtrusive services from the minute when
her maid woke her in the morning till she helped her to change her dress
for dinner, and yet there was nothing for it but to go through the
customary daily round. When it became necessary to tell the women that
the preparations for the wedding must be stopped and that the
invitations to the two big dinners that were to be given in honor of
Colonel Ashley had been withdrawn she gathered from small signs--the
feigned stolidity of some of them and the overacted astonishment of
others--that they had probably been even better informed than Drusilla
Fane. After that the food they brought her choked her and the maid's
touch on her person was like fire, while she still found herself obliged
to submit to these long-established attentions.

She was reduced to drawing patience from what Guion told her as to his
illness checking temporarily the course of legal action. Most of the
men with whom it lay to set the law in motion, notably Dixon, the
District-Attorney, were old friends of his, who would hesitate to drag
him from a sick-room to face indictment. He had had long interviews with
Dixon about the case already, and knew how reluctant that official was
to move in the matter, anyhow; but as soon as he, Guion, was out and
about again, all kindly scruples would have to yield. "You'll find," he
explained to her, "that the question as to breakin