‘Are you still feverish?’ Stella asked, putting to her cheek the ungloved hand.

‘I think not—­I can’t say.’

Stella waited to hear something about the evening, but Adela broke the silence to say: 

‘I must leave at ten in the morning.  My husband will call for me.’

‘So early?’

‘Yes.’

There was silence again.

‘Will you come and see me before long, Stella?’

‘I will,’ was the gentle reply.

‘Thank you.  I shall look forward to it very much.’

Then Adela said good-night, speaking more cheerfully.

In her bedroom she sat as before dinner.  The fever had subsided during the past two hours, but now it crept into her blood again, insidious, tingling.  And with it came so black a phantom of despair that Adela closed her eyes shudderingly, lay back as one lifeless, and wished that it were possible by the will alone to yield the breath and cease.  The night pulsed about her, beat regularly like a great clock, and its pulsing smote upon her brain.

To-morrow she must follow her husband, who would come to lead her home.  Home? what home had she?  What home would she ever have but a grave in the grassy churchyard of Wanley?  Why did death spare her when it took the life which panted but for a moment on her bosom?

She must leave Stella and go back to her duties at the Manor; must teach the children of New Wanley; must love, honour, obey her husband.  Returning from Exmouth, she was glad to see her house again; now she had rather a thousand times die than go back.  Horror shook her like a palsy; all that she had borne for eighteen months seemed accumulated upon her now, waited for her there at Wanley to be endured again.  Oh! where was the maiden whiteness of her soul?  What malignant fate had robbed her for ever of innocence and peace?

Was this fever or madness?  She rose and flung her arms against a hideous form which was about to seize her.  It would not vanish, it pressed upon her.  She cried, fled to the door, escaped, and called Stella’s name aloud.

A door near her own opened, and Stella appeared.  Adela clung to her, and was drawn into the room.  Those eyes of infinite pity gazing into her own availed to calm her.

‘Shall I send for some one?’ Stella asked anxiously, but with no weak bewilderment.

‘No; it is not illness.  But I dread to be alone; I am nervous.’

‘Will you stay with me, dear?’

‘Oh, Stella, let me, let me!  I want to be near to you whilst I may!’

Stella’s child slept peacefully in a crib; the voices were too low to wake it.  Almost like another child, Adela allowed herself to be undressed.

‘Shall I leave a light?’ Stella asked.

‘No, I can sleep.  Only let me feel your arms.’

They lay in unbroken silence till both slept.

CHAPTER XXIII