ort, but it could hardly be very real
at first, and to give it any aspect of permanence time was necessary.

Laurent and Paul concocted a plan of campaign. It was essential in
the doctor's opinion to avoid as far as possible all open evidence
of watchfulness, and yet to know very accurately what was being done.
Innumerable attempts were made to break the cordon of guardianship
which was drawn around Annette. She feigned, of course, as people in
her position always feign, to acquiesce entirely in the means which were
adopted to guard her from herself, but there were eternal skirmishes
between the outlying posts of the two armies which came in a very short
time to be established. In that newfound prosperity of his Paul had
grown absolutely careless about money, and he had not the faintest idea
as to the extent of his wife's supplies. That she had enough, for
the time being, to corrupt quite a small regiment was speedily made
manifest, and a silent contest, in which the victor acknowledged victory
no more than the vanquished admitted defeat, set in. How wide the
ramifications of this strange war might be Paul could not guess, but on
occasion some circumstance would reveal that they had reached unexpected
distances. It was a perfectly understood thing in the hotel itself that
no supplies of wine or of more potent liquor were to be supplied at
Madame Armstrong's order. The village pharmacien sold nothing to her
without Laurent's consent, but there were ways and means of one sort or
another by which she contrived to procure her poison, and at such times
the old signs were always perceptible: the passion for solitude,
the tricksy, changing spirit which varied from extravagant mirth
to unreasonable anger. Laurent watched the contest with a sleepless
loyalty, and Annette, finding herself foiled by him a thousand times
oftener than by the less vigilant Paul, grew to hate him. But in spite
of all the unfortunate creature could do to accelerate her own ruin,
she grew slowly back to health, and to something more than her original
personal attractiveness. For a kind of experience was marked upon her,
and the indefinable yet universally recognised expression which betokens
this was present in her looks. When watchfulness prevailed over the
strange craft which was brought into conflict with it, Annette knew how
to be charming, even to the man who suffered so much at her hands; but
when the contrabandists succeeded in running in their su