blue eyes forever, but that
night she found he followed her into her dreams. He stalked her, he
stared at her, he craved her, he sidled slinking and propitiatory
and yet relentlessly toward her, until at last she awoke from the
suffocating nightmare nearness of his approach, and lay awake in fear
and horror listening to the unaccustomed sounds of the hotel.

She came very near that night to resolving that she would return to
her home next morning. But the morning brought courage again, and those
first intimations of horror vanished completely from her mind.

Part 5

She had sent her father a telegram from the East Strand post-office
worded thus:

| All | is | well | with | me |
|---------|-----------|----------|----------|---------|
| and | quite | safe | Veronica | |
-----------------------------------------------------

and afterward she had dined a la carte upon a cutlet, and had then set
herself to write an answer to Mr. Manning's proposal of marriage. But
she had found it very difficult.

"DEAR MR. MANNING," she had begun. So far it had been plain sailing,
and it had seemed fairly evident to go on: "I find it very difficult to
answer your letter."

But after that neither ideas nor phrases had come and she had fallen
thinking of the events of the day. She had decided that she would spend
the next morning answering advertisements in the papers that abounded in
the writing-room; and so, after half an hour's perusal of back numbers
of the Sketch in the drawing-room, she had gone to bed.

She found next morning, when she came to this advertisement answering,
that it was more difficult than she had supposed. In the first place
there were not so many suitable advertisements as she had expected.
She sat down by the paper-rack with a general feeling of resemblance
to Vivie Warren, and looked through the Morning Post and Standard and
Telegraph, and afterward the half-penny sheets. The Morning Post was
hungry for governesses and nursery governesses, but held out no other
hopes; the Daily Telegraph that morning seemed eager only for skirt
hands. She went to a writing-desk and made some memoranda on a sheet of
note-paper, and then remembered that she had no address as yet to which
letters could be sent.

She decided to leave this matter until the morrow and devote the morning
to settling up with Mr. Manning. At the cost of quite a number of torn