Her anxieties were increased by the fact that her faithful servant and adviser, James Steadman, was no longer the man he had been.  The change in him was painfully evident—­memory failing, energy gone.  He came to his mistress’s room every morning, received her orders, answered her questions; but Lady Maulevrier felt that he went through the old duties in a mechanical way, and that his dull brain but half understood their importance.

One evening at dusk, just as Hartfield and Mary were leaving Lady Maulevrier’s room, after dinner, an appalling shriek ran through the house—­a cry almost as terrible as that which Lord Hartfield heard in the summer midnight just a year ago.  But this time the sound came from the old part of the house.

‘Something has happened,’ exclaimed Hartfield, rushing to the door of communication.

It was bolted inside.  He knocked vehemently; but there was no answer.  He ran downstairs, followed by Mary, breathless, in an agony of fear.  Just as they approached the lower door, leading to the old house, it was flung open, and Steadman’s wife stood before them pale with terror.

‘The doctor,’ she cried; ’send for Mr. Horton, somebody, for God’s sake.  Oh, my lord,’ with a sudden burst of sobbing, ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’

‘Mary, despatch some one for Horton,’ said Lord Hartfield.  Keeping his wife back with one hand, he closed the door against her, and then followed Mrs. Steadman through the long low corridor to her husband’s sitting-room.

James Steadman was lying upon his back upon the hearth, near the spot were Lord Hartfield had seen him sleeping in his arm-chair a month ago.

One look at the distorted face, dark with injected blood, the dreadful glassy glare of the eyes, the foam-stained lips, told that all was over.  The faithful servant had died at his post.  Whatever his charge had been, his term of service was ended.  There was a vacancy in Lady Maulevrier’s household.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE DAY OF RECKONING.

Lord Hartfield stayed with the frightened wife while she knelt beside that awful figure on the hearth, wringing her hands with piteous bewailings and lamentations over the unconscious clay.  He had always been a good husband to her, she murmured; hard and stern perhaps, but a good man.  And she had obeyed him without a question.  Whatever he did or said she had counted right.

’We have not had a happy life, though there are many who have envied us her ladyship’s favour,’ she said in the midst of her lamentations.  ’No one knows where the shoe pinches but those who have to wear it.  Poor James!  Early and late, early and late, studying her ladyship’s interests, caring and thinking, in order to keep trouble away from her.  Always on the watch always on the listen.  That’s what wore him out, poor fellow!’

‘My good soul, your husband was an old man,’ argued Lord Hartfield, in a consolatory tone, ‘and the end must come to all of us somehow.’