Emily gasped for breath, and lifted her head as if to raise it above the wall which was being slowly built round her.
"Nothing will be done which can be proved," said Hester Osborn. "I have lived among native people, and know. If Ameerah hated me and I could not get rid of her I should die, and it would all seem quite natural."
She bent down and picked up the empty glass from the carpet.
"It is a good thing it did not break," she said, as she put it on the tray. "Ameerah will think you drank the milk and that nothing will hurt you. You escape them always. She will be frightened."
As she said it she began to cry a little, like a child.
"Nothing will save me," she said. "I shall have to go back, I shall have to go back!"
"No, no!" cried Emily.
The girl swept away her tears with the back of a clenched hand.
"At first, when I hated you," she was even petulant and plaintively resentful, "I thought I could let it go on. I watched, and watched, and bore it. But the strain was too great. I broke down. I think I broke down one night, when something began to beat like a pulse against my side."
Emily got up and stood before her. She looked perhaps rather as she had looked when she rose and stood before the Marquis of Walderhurst on a memorable occasion, the afternoon on the moor. She felt almost quiet, and safe.