Lady Walderhurst put out her hand to a letter which lay on the table.

“I heard from him this morning,” she said.  “And he has been sent to the Hills because he has a little fever.  He must be quiet.  So you see he cannot come yet.”

She was shivering, though she was determined to keep still.

“What was in the milk?” she asked.

“In the milk there was the Indian root Ameerah gave the village girl.  Last night as I sat under a tree in the dark I heard it talked over.  Only a few native women know it.”

There was a singular gravity in the words poor Lady Walderhurst spoke in reply.

“That,” she said, “would have been the cruelest thing of all.”

Mrs. Osborn got up and came close to her.

“If you had gone out on Faustine,” she said, “you would have met with an accident.  It might or might not have killed you.  But it would have been an accident.  If you had gone downstairs before Jane Cupp saw the bit of broken balustrade you might have been killed—­by accident again.  If you had leaned upon the rail of the bridge you would have been drowned, and no human being could have been accused or blamed.”

Emily gasped for breath, and lifted her head as if to raise it above the wall which was being slowly built round her.

“Nothing will be done which can be proved,” said Hester Osborn.  “I have lived among native people, and know.  If Ameerah hated me and I could not get rid of her I should die, and it would all seem quite natural.”

She bent down and picked up the empty glass from the carpet.

“It is a good thing it did not break,” she said, as she put it on the tray.  “Ameerah will think you drank the milk and that nothing will hurt you.  You escape them always.  She will be frightened.”

As she said it she began to cry a little, like a child.

“Nothing will save me,” she said.  “I shall have to go back, I shall have to go back!”

“No, no!” cried Emily.

The girl swept away her tears with the back of a clenched hand.

“At first, when I hated you,” she was even petulant and plaintively resentful, “I thought I could let it go on.  I watched, and watched, and bore it.  But the strain was too great.  I broke down.  I think I broke down one night, when something began to beat like a pulse against my side.”

Emily got up and stood before her.  She looked perhaps rather as she had looked when she rose and stood before the Marquis of Walderhurst on a memorable occasion, the afternoon on the moor.  She felt almost quiet, and safe.

“What must I do?” she asked, as if she was speaking to a friend.  “I am afraid.  Tell me.”

Little Mrs. Osborn stood still and stared at her.  The most incongruous thought came to her mind.  She found herself, at this weird moment, observing how well the woman held her stupid head, how finely it was set on her shoulders, and that in a modern Royal Academy way she was rather like the Venus of Milo.  It is quite out of place to think such things at such a time.  But she found herself confronted with them.