The Lime Avenue seemed a mile long, and yet when she was running down it she saw Lady Walderhurst walking slowly under the trees carrying her touching little basket of sewing in her hand.  She was close to the bridge.

“My lady! my lady!” she gasped out as soon as she dared.  She could not run screaming all the way.  “Oh, my lady! if you please!”

Emily heard her and turned round.  Never had she been much more amazed in her life.  Her maid, her well-bred Jane Cupp, who had not drawn an indecorous breath since assuming her duties, was running after her calling out to her, waving her hands, her face distorted, her voice hysteric.

Emily had been just on the point of stepping on to the bridge, her hand had been outstretched towards the rail.  She drew back a step in alarm and stood staring.  How strange everything seemed to-day.  She began to feel choked and trembling.

A few seconds and Jane was upon her, clutching at her dress.  She had so lost her breath that she was almost speechless.

“My lady,” she panted.  “Don’t set foot on it; don’t—­don’t, till we’re sure.”

“On—­on what?”

Then Jane realised how mad she looked, how insane the whole scene was, and she gave way to her emotions.  Partly through physical exhaustion and breathlessness, and partly through helpless terror, she fell on her knees.

“The bridge!” she said.  “I don’t care what happens to me so that no harm comes to you.  There’s things being plotted and planned that looks like accidents.  The bridge would look like an accident if part of it broke.  There’s no bottom to the water.  They were saying so yesterday, and she sat listening.  I found her here last night.”

“She!  Her!” Emily felt as if she was passing through another nightmare.

“Ameerah,” wailed poor Jane.  “White ones have no chance against black.  Oh, my lady!” her sense of the possibility that she might be making a fool of herself after all was nearly killing her.  “I believe she would drive you to your death if she could do it, think what you will of me.”

The little basket of needlework shook in Lady Walderhurst’s hand.  She swallowed hard, and without warning sat down on the roots of a fallen tree, her cheeks blanching slowly.

“Oh Jane!” she said in simple woe and bewilderment.  “I don’t understand any of it.  How could—­how could they want to hurt me!” Her innocence was so fatuous that she thought that because she had been kind to them they could not hate or wish to injure her.

But something for the first time made her begin to quail.  She sat, and tried to recover herself.  She put out a shaking hand to the basket of sewing.  She could scarcely see it, because suddenly tears had filled her eyes.

“Bring one of the men here,” she said, after a few moments.  “Tell him that I am a little uncertain about the safety of the bridge.”