Elizabeth had seen how she stood for misery to him, seen, too, another
danger which she had never thought of before. This possibility, remote
enough, would not be put out of sight now. It might happen that if there
were proved to have been no marriage between herself and Stephen
Archdale, the certainty of this would come too late to save Katie for
him. Elizabeth turned wild at the sense of her own helplessness. "I am
one too many in the world," she thought; she could not have spoken, all
her will was concentrating into action. Night had overswept her; she
forgot everything in her thought for the beings whom she saw were
covered by the same cloud. She was to be always an ugly obstacle to the
happiness of Katie and of a man she pitied. Whichever way she turned it
seemed that there was no other chance for her. She would not go through
the world one too many. On coming into the room she had put back the
curtains for more air and had blown out the candles. She did not light
them again; all that she was going to do she could see well enough to do
by the stars and the long summer twilight. She sat down in the armchair
beside her table, drew her dressing-case toward her, and opening it,
unlocked one compartment with a tiny key found in another. The package
so carefully locked away here was something that Mrs. Eveleigh in one of
her nervous moods had given her to keep, lest some accident should
happen. To be sure, she had given it under promise that no one should
know of it, for she had used it for only a little while for her
complexion, she explained to Elizabeth, and might never want it again.
But, on the other hand, she might. It had been a good deal of trouble to
buy it; she did not want to run another gauntlet of questions. So the
powder had lain in Elizabeth's dressing-case, unremembered even, until
to-night. Now she took it out with a firm hand; there was no sign of
shrinking or fear about her, not because she was incapable of it, for
she had her terrors, though she showed them less than some women. But
she was a soldier in the midst of battle whose only object is to