Half an hour after Delafield’s departure there appeared on the terrace of the hotel a tottering, emaciated form—­Aileen Moffatt, in a black dress and hat, clinging to her mother’s arm.  But she refused the deck—­chair, which they had spread with cushions and shawls.

“No; let me sit up.”  And she took an ordinary chair, looking round upon the lake and the little flowery terrace with a slow, absorbed look, like one trying to remember.  Suddenly she bowed her head on her hands.

“Aileen!” cried Lady Blanche, in an agony.

But the girl motioned her away.  “Don’t, mummy.  I’m all right.”

And restraining any further emotion, she laid her arms on the balustrade and gazed long and calmly into the purple depths and gleaming snows of the Rhone valley.  Her hat oppressed her and she took it off, revealing the abundance of her delicately golden hair, which, in its lack of lustre and spring, seemed to share in the physical distress and loss of the whole personality.

The face was that of a doomed creature, incapable now of making any successful struggle for the right to live.  What had been sensibility had become melancholy; the slight, chronic frown was deeper, the pale lips more pinched.  Yet intermittently there was still great sweetness, the last effort of a “beautiful soul” meant for happiness, and withered before its time.

As Julie stood beside her, while Lady Blanche had gone to fetch a book from the salon, the poor child put out her hand and grasped that of Julie.

“It is quite possible I may get the letter to-night,” she said, in a hurried whisper.  “My maid went down to Montreux—­there is a clever man at the post-office who tried to make it out for us.  He thinks it’ll be to-night.”

“Don’t be too disappointed if nothing comes,” said Julie, caressing the hand.  Its thinness, its icy and lifeless touch, dismayed her.  Ah, how easily might this physical wreck have been her doing!

* * * * *

The bells of Montreux struck half-past six.  A restless and agonized expectation began to show itself in all the movements of the invalid.  She left her chair and began to pace the little terrace on Julie’s arm.  Her dragging step, the mournful black of her dress, the struggle between youth and death in her sharpened face, made her a tragic presence.  Julie could hardly bear it, while all the time she, too, was secretly and breathlessly waiting for Warkworth’s last words.

Lady Blanche returned, and Julie hurried away.

She passed through the hotel and walked down the Montreux road.  The post had already reached the first houses of the village, and the postman, who knew her, willingly gave her the letters.

Yes, a packet for Aileen, addressed in an unknown hand to a London address, and forwarded thence.  It bore the Denga postmark.

And another for herself, readdressed from London by Madame Bornier.  She tore off the outer envelope; beneath was a letter of which the address was feebly written in Warkworth’s hand:  “Mademoiselle Le Breton, 3 Heribert Street, London.”