considering it necessary for the bed to appear to have been lain on.  Considering also that she ought to be heard moving about in the process of undressing, she rose from the bed to make sure of her reading of the guilty clock.  An hour and twenty minutes! she had no more time than that:  and it was not enough for her various preparations, though it was true that her maid had packed and taken a box of the things chiefly needful; but the duchess had to change her shoes and her dress, and run at bo-peep with the changes of her mind, a sedative preface to any fatal step among women of her complexion, for so they invite indecision to exhaust their scruples, and they let the blood have its way.  Having so short a space of time, she thought the matter decided, and with some relief she flung despairing on the bed, and lay down for good with her duke.  In a little while her head was at work reviewing him sternly, estimating him not less accurately than the male moralist charitable to her sex would do.  She quitted the bed, with a spring to escape her imagined lord; and as if she had felt him to be there, she lay down no more.  A quiet life like that was flatter to her idea than a handsomely bound big book without any print on the pages, and without a picture.  Her contemplation of it, contrasted with the life waved to her view by the timepiece, set her whole system rageing; she burned to fly.  Providently, nevertheless, she thumped a pillow, and threw the bedclothes into proper disorder, to inform the world that her limbs had warmed them, and that all had been impulse with her.  She then proceeded to disrobe, murmuring to herself that she could stop now, and could stop now, at each stage of the advance to a fresh dressing of her person, and moralizing on her singular fate, in the mouth of an observer.  ’She was shot up suddenly over everybody’s head, and suddenly down she went.’  Susan whispered to herself:  ‘But it was for love!’ Possessed by the rosiness of love, she finished her business, with an attention to everything needed that was equal to perfect serenity of mind.  After which there was nothing to do, save to sit humped in a chair, cover her face and count the clock-tickings, that said, Yes—­no; do—­don’t; fly—­stay; fly—­fly!  It seemed to her she heard a moving.  Well she might with that dreadful heart of hers!

Chloe was asleep, at peace by this time, she thought; and how she envied Chloe!  She might be as happy, if she pleased.  Why not?  But what kind of happiness was it?  She likened it to that of the corpse underground, and shrank distastefully.

Susan stood at her glass to have a look at the creature about whom there was all this disturbance, and she threw up her arms high for a languid, not unlovely yawn, that closed in blissful shuddering with the sensation of her lover’s arms having wormed round her waist and taken her while she was defenceless.  For surely they would.  She took a jewelled ring, his gift, from her purse, and kissed it, and drew it on and off her finger, leaving it on.  Now she might wear it without fear of inquiries and virtuous eyebrows.  O heavenly now—­if only it were an hour hence; and going behind galloping horses!