rary and obstinate figures, which stood for
apprehension to the most casual ear, stamped themselves on most things
as the day wore on, and at tea-time Mrs. Barberry gave her other
details, thinking her rather cold in the reception of them. But she
plainly preferred to be out of it, avoiding the nurses on the stairs,
refraining from so much as a glance at the boiled-milk preparations of
the butler. "And you know," said Mrs. Barberry, recountant, "how these
people have to be watched." To Mrs. Barberry she was really a conundrum,
only to be solved on the theory of a perfectly preposterous delicacy.
There was so little that was preposterous in Miss Livingstone's conduct
as a rule that it is not quite fair to explain her attitude either by
this exaggeration or by an equally hectic scruple about her right to
take care of her guest, such a right dwindling curiously when it has
been given in the highest to somebody else. These pangs and penalties
may have visited her in their proportion, but they did not take the
importance of motives. She rather stood aside with folded hands, and in
an infinite terror of prejudicing fate, devoured her heart by way of
keeping its beating normal. Perhaps, too, she had a vision of a final
alternative to Lindsay's marriage, and one can imagine her forcing
herself to look at it.

Remove herself as she chose, Alicia could not avoid passing Lindsay's
room, for her own lay beyond it. In the seven o'clock half light of a
February evening, in the middle of the week, she went along the matted
upper hall on tip-toe, and stumbled over a veiled form squatted in the
native way, near his door, profoundly asleep. "Ayah!" she exclaimed, but
the face that looked confusedly up at her was white, whiter than common,
Captain Filbert's face. Alicia drew her hand away and made an
imperceptible movement in the direction of her skirts. She stood silent,
stricken in the dusk with fear and wonder, but the sense that was
strangest in her was plainly that of having made a criminal discovery.
Laura stumbled upon her feet, and the two faced each other for an
instant; words held from them equally by the authority of the sickroom
door. Then Alicia beckoned as imperiously as if the other had in fact
been the servant she took her for, and Laura followed to where, further
on, a bedroom door stood open, which presently closed upon them both. It
was a spacious room, with pale, high-hung draperies, a scent of flowers,
such things as