"Let's be humbly grateful that we've got her back," he said, smiling, "while we prepare her bed."
CHAPTER IV
The Power of the Blood
WHEN he came out into the hall the next morning, Lydia met him, in her dressing-gown, on her way from Alice's room.
"How is she?" he asked eagerly. "Did she sleep?"
"No, she was very restless, so I stayed with her. She went home a quarter of an hour ago."
"Went home? Do you mean she's gone back to that brute?"
A servant's step sounded upon the staircase, and with her unfailing instinct for propriety, she drew back into his room and lowered her voice.
"She said that she was too uncomfortable without her clothes and her maid, but I think she had definitely made up her mind to return to him."
"But when did she change? You heard her say last night that she would rather kill herself."
"Oh, you know Alice," she responded a little wearily; and for the first time it occurred to him that the exact knowledge of Alice might belong, after all, not to himself, but to her.