Arthur felt with something like a shudder that, if Lady Bellamy prophesied evil, evil was following hard upon her words.  And in warning him not to place his whole heart’s happiness upon one venture, lest it should meet with shipwreck, he was sure that she was prophesying with a knowledge of the future denied to ordinary mortals.  How earnestly, too, she had cautioned him against putting absolute faith in Angela—­so earnestly, indeed, that her talk had left a flavour of distrust in his mind.  Yet how could he mistrust Angela?

Nor was he comforted by a remark that fell from Mildred Carr the afternoon following the departure of the mail.  Raising her eyes, she glanced at his hand.

“What are you looking at?” he said.

“Was not that queer emerald you wore your engagement ring?”

“Yes.”

“What have you done with it?”

“I gave it to Lady Bellamy to give to Angela.”

“What for?”

“To show her that I am alive and well.  I may not write, you know.”

“You are very confiding.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.  At least, I mean that I don’t think that I should care to hand over my engagement ring so easily.  It might be misapplied, you know.”

This view of the matter helped to fill up the cup of Arthur’s nervous anxiety, and he vainly plied Mildred with questions to get her to elucidate her meaning, and state her causes of suspicion, if she had any; but she would say nothing more on the subject, which then dropped, and was not alluded to again between them.

After the Bellamys’ departure, the time wore on at Madeira without bringing about any appreciable change in the situation.  But Mildred saw that their visit had robbed her of any advantages she had gained over Arthur, for they had, as it were, brought Angela’s atmosphere with them, and, faint though it was, it sufficed to overpower her influence.  He made no move forward, and seemed to have entirely forgotten the episode on the hills when he had gone so very near disaster.  On the contrary, he appeared to her to grow increasingly preoccupied as time went on, and to look upon her more and more in the light of a sister, till at length her patience wore thin.

As for her passion, it grew almost unrestrainable in its confinement.  Now she drifted like a rudderless vessel on a sea which raged continuously and knew no space of calm.  And so little oil was poured upon the troubled waters, there were so few breaks in the storm-walls that rose black between her and the desired haven of her rest.  Indeed, she began to doubt if even her poor power of charming him, as at first she had been able to do, with the sparkle of her wit and the half-unconscious display of her natural grace, was not on the wane, and if she was not near to losing her precarious foothold in his esteem and affection.  The thought that he might be tiring of her struck her like a freezing wind, and for a moment turned her heart to ice.