As Jane had gathered from her, by careful and apparently incidental inquiry, Emily had had no intention of visiting her retreat.  In the morning she had, in fact, not felt quite well enough.  Her nightmare had shaken her far more on its second occurring.  The stealthy hand had seemed not merely to touch, but to grip at her side, and she had been physically unable to rise for some minutes after her awakening.  This experience had its physical and mental effects on her.

She did not see Hester until luncheon, and after luncheon she found her to be in one of her strange humours.  She was often in these strange humours at this time.  She wore a nervous and strained look, and frequently seemed to have been crying.  She had new lines on her forehead between the eyebrows.  Emily had tried in vain to rouse and cheer her with sympathetic feminine talk.  There were days when she felt that for some reason Hester did not care to see her.

She felt it this afternoon, and not being herself at the high-water mark of cheerfulness, she was conscious of a certain degree of discouragement.  She had liked her so much, she had wanted to be friends with her and to make her life an easier thing, and yet she appeared somehow to have failed.  It was because she was so far from being a clever woman.  Perhaps she might fail in other things because she was not clever.  Perhaps she was never able to give to people what they wanted, what they needed.  A brilliant woman had such power to gain and hold love.

After an hour or so spent in trying to raise the mental temperature of Mrs. Osborn’s beflowered boudoir, she rose and picked up her little work-basket.

“Perhaps you would take a nap if I left you,” she said.  “I think I will stroll down to the lake.”

She quietly stole away, leaving Hester on her cushions.

Chapter Seventeen

A few minutes later a knock at the door being replied to by Hester’s curt “Come in!” produced the modest entry of Jane Cupp, who had come to make a necessary inquiry of her mistress.  “Her ladyship is not here; she has gone out.”  Jane made an altogether involuntary step forward.  Her face became the colour of her clean white apron.

“Out!” she gasped.

Hester turned sharply round.

“To the lake,” she said.  “What do you mean by staring in that way?”

Jane did not tell her what she meant.  She incontinently ran from the room without any shadow of a pretence at a lady’s maid’s decorum.

She fled through the rooms, to make a short cut to the door opening on to the gardens.  Through that she darted, and flew across paths and flowerbeds towards the avenue of limes.

“She shan’t get to the bridge before me,” she panted.  “She shan’t, she shan’t.  I won’t let her.  Oh, if my breath will only hold out!”

She did not reflect that gardeners would naturally think she had gone mad.  She thought of nothing whatever but the look in Ameerah’s downcast eyes when the servants had talked of the bottomless water,—­the eerie, satisfied, sly look.  Of that, and of the rising of the white figure from the ground last night she thought, and she clutched her neat side as she ran.