CHAPTER XIII--OOLANGA'S HALLUCINATIONS


During the last few days Lady Arabella had been getting exceedingly
impatient. Her debts, always pressing, were growing to an embarrassing
amount. The only hope she had of comfort in life was a good marriage;
but the good marriage on which she had fixed her eye did not seem to move
quickly enough--indeed, it did not seem to move at all--in the right
direction. Edgar Caswall was not an ardent wooer. From the very first
he seemed _difficile_, but he had been keeping to his own room ever since
his struggle with Mimi Watford. On that occasion Lady Arabella had shown
him in an unmistakable way what her feelings were; indeed, she had made
it known to him, in a more overt way than pride should allow, that she
wished to help and support him. The moment when she had gone across the
room to stand beside him in his mesmeric struggle, had been the very
limit of her voluntary action. It was quite bitter enough, she felt,
that he did not come to her, but now that she had made that advance, she
felt that any withdrawal on his part would, to a woman of her class, be
nothing less than a flaming insult. Had she not classed herself with his
nigger servant, an unreformed savage? Had she not shown her preference
for him at the festival of his home-coming? Had she not . . . Lady
Arabella was cold-blooded, and she was prepared to go through all that
might be necessary of indifference, and even insult, to become chatelaine
of Castra Regis. In the meantime, she would show no hurry--she must
wait. She might, in an unostentatious way, come to him again. She knew
him now, and could make a keen guess at his desires with regard to Lilla
Watford. With that secret in her possession, she could bring pressure to
bear on Caswall which would make it no easy matter for him to evade her.