She sat under the tree in the dark for at least an hour.  The thick shadow of the drooping branches hid her in actual blackness and seclusion.

She said to herself later that some one of the occult powers she believed in had made her go out and sit in this particular spot, because there was a thing which was not to be, and she herself must come between.

When she at last rose it was with panting breath.  She stole back to her room, and lighted with an unsteady hand a bedroom candle, whose flame flickered upon a distorted, little dark face.  For as she had sat under the tree she had, after a while, heard whispering begin quite near her; had caught, even in the darkness, a gleam of white, and had therefore deliberately sat and listened.

* * * * *

There could be, to the purely normal geniality of Emily Walderhurst’s nature, no greater relief than the recognition that a cloud had passed from the mood of another.

When Hester appeared the next morning at the breakfast-table, she had emerged from her humour of the day before and was almost affectionate in her amiability.  The meal at an end, she walked with Emily in the garden.

She had never shown such interest in what pertained to her as she revealed this morning.  Something she had always before lacked Emily recognised in her for the first time,—­a desire to ask friendly questions, to verge on the confidential.  They talked long and without reserve.  And how pretty it was of the girl, Emily thought, to care so much about her health and her spirits, to be so interested in the details of her every-day life, even in the simple matter of the preparation and serving of her food, as if the merest trifle was of consequence.  It had been unfair, too, to fancy that she felt no interest in Walderhurst’s absence and return.  She had noticed everything closely, and actually thought he ought to come back at once.

“Send for him,” she said quite suddenly; “send for him now.”

There was an eagerness expressed in the dark thinness of her face which moved Emily.

“It is dear of you to care so much, Hester,” she said.  “I didn’t know you thought it mattered.”

“He must come,” said Hester.  “That’s all.  Send for him.”

“I wrote a letter yesterday,” was Lady Walderhurst’s meek rejoinder.  “I got nervous.”

“So did I get nervous,” said Hester; “so did I.”

That she was disturbed Emily could see.  The little laugh she ended her words with had an excited ring in it.

During the Osborns’ stay at Palstrey the two women had naturally seen a good deal of each other, but for the next two days they were scarcely separated at all.  Emily, feeling merely cheered and supported by the fact that Hester made herself so excellent a companion, was not aware of two or three things.  One was that Mrs. Osborn did not lose sight of her unless at such times as she was in the hands of Jane Cupp.