It was not long before Mrs. Krauss became aware, more by instinct than actual knowledge, that her niece had discovered the real cause of her illness.  One evening as Sophy bent over to kiss her and say good night, she took her hand in both of hers and, with tears trickling down her face, whispered: 

“Sophy darling, I’ve tried—­it’s no use; whatever happens, keep it from him!”

And this was the sole occasion on which Aunt Flora ever alluded to her failing.

CHAPTER XXXII

ON DUTY

The veil that shrouded her aunt’s secret being now withdrawn, by a strange paradox a heavy cloud of darkness descended upon Sophy; she seemed to have suddenly passed from a warm glow of sunlight into a cold shadow-land of mystery and fear.  Before Herr Krauss and the outer world she still carried a buoyant standard of false high spirits.  Her rippling laughter and cheerful repartees were to be heard where young people were assembled at the Gymkhana, or elsewhere; but this Sophy wore another aspect when she sat on duty in her aunt’s bedroom, whiling away restlessness and want of sleep with reading and talk, and even cards.  Many a time the dawn was breaking before she was at liberty to go to bed.  No wonder that she looked pale and fagged—­no wonder people gazed at her keenly and inquired about her health.  It is not easy even for a girl of two-and-twenty thus to burn the candle at both ends!  Riding, dancing, and playing tennis in the daytime, and then sitting up half the night, with a restless and fretful patient.  It was this Sophy who conferred so long and earnestly with Lily ayah, respecting methods to be adopted, pretences effected, infinitesimal doses exchanged for the usual amount, and the patient craftily beguiled—­but it is almost impossible to beguile a person who is suffering from the fierce craving for a drug; and the want of her normal supply soon began to make itself apparent in Mrs. Krauss, and there were not a few exhausting scenes.

Sophy found it necessary to take her ayah Moti into her confidence—­a humiliating obligation (as it happened, Moti had always been in the secret), and among the three it was arranged that the mistress of the house was to be watched and never left alone.  Occasionally Mrs. Krauss had disputes and dreadful altercations with Lily; but by degrees she appeared to acquiesce; her strength was unequal to a prolonged struggle, and the victim of cocaine would throw herself down on her bed and moan like some dying animal.  These moans pierced the heart of her unhappy niece.