now--perhaps it was contrast with his fitful return to something like the
world's ways, during Lady Knollys' stay--more silent, sad, and isolated
than before. Of Madame de la Rougierre I had nothing at first particular to
remark. Only, reader, if you happen to be a rather nervous and very young
girl, I ask you to conceive my fears and imaginings, and the kind of misery
which I was suffering. Its intensity I cannot now even myself recall. But
it overshadowed me perpetually--a care, an alarm. It lay down with me at
night and got up with me in the morning, tinting and disturbing my dreams,
and making my daily life terrible. I wonder now that I lived through
the ordeal. The torment was secret and incessant, and kept my mind in
unintermitting activity.

Externally things went on at Knowl for some weeks in the usual routine.
Madame was, so far as her unpleasant ways were concerned, less tormenting
than before, and constantly reminded me of 'our leetle vow of friendship,
you remember, dearest Maud!' and she would stand beside me, and looked from
the window with her bony arm round my waist, and my reluctant hand drawn
round in hers; and thus she would smile, and talk affectionately and even
playfully; for at times she would grow quite girlish, and smile with
her great carious teeth, and begin to quiz and babble about the young
'faylows,' and tell bragging tales of her lovers, all of which were
dreadful to me.

She was perpetually recurring, too, to the charming walk we had had
together to Church Scarsdale, and proposing a repetition of that delightful
excursion, which, you may be sure, I evaded, having by no means so
agreeable a recollection of our visit.

One day, as I was dressing to go out for a walk, in came good Mrs. Rusk,
the housekeeper, to my room.