'You see,' said her monitress pitilessly, 'you will be injudicious. I am always telling you. You can't be content with fluttering round the candle, but must needs go into the flame and singe your wings, and then of course it hurts you. People should know when to stop.'
'And,' cried Maud, in a thorough passion, 'people should not throw stones who live in glass houses. Why, Mrs. Vereker, if I am a flirt, I should like to know who taught me?'
'Now you are rude and cross. You should never throw stones, whether you live in a glass house or not. The best thing I can do is to leave you to recover your temper.'
Mrs. Vereker was gone and Maud's last friend seemed lost to her. She had offended every one; or rather every one had done something to offend her. She disliked them all. She flung herself upon her bed and wept in very bitterness of heart. She longed for a really friendly, loving hand to take her and get her right; she longed for her old mistress to confess to; she thought of Felicia, considerate, tender, sympathetic, and she seemed like an angel compared with those amongst whom she was living. If she could but have crept to her embrace and breathed her troubles in her ear! She thought of her husband—the pure and faithful heart beating with no thought but for her, where nothing coarse or unchivalrous could ever find a place; where she knew that she alone was enshrined; of his perfect trust in her, his spotless faith, his transparent honour. She looked at his photograph standing on the table: how grave and sad it looked! She flung herself on the bed; the bitter tears of remorse and repentance began to flow, and while they flowed—for Maud was far more exhausted than she knew—she slept; and in her sleep of a few minutes passed into dreamland; not the happy, silly, aimless dreamland of easy minds and tired frames, where Maud's nights were chiefly spent; but into a sad weird region, where everything seemed horribly real and connected and designed and to bear some frightful relation to actual life that makes it part of our being and haunts one's after-thoughts. She was with her husband once again, and yet it was not quite himself; an undefined something separated him from her and all the past. She was riding by him. How grieved and reproachful a mien he wore, as of a man with a hidden sorrow cankering his heart! And then he fell, and Maud saw him crushed and wounded and helpless as once before, and agonised in some frightful entanglement with his horse. She meanwhile was trying in vain to help or to approach him, for a hidden hand restrained her, and Sutton himself, sad and stern, was waving her away. And then came a fierce struggle and blows and cries, and Maud found herself waking with a scream and her servant standing by her bed and saying that a 'Sahib' had come and wanted to see her directly.
She knew what it meant and went with a beating heart into the drawing-room, as fresh from the land of sorrow and ready for news of disaster.
She found Boldero in the drawing-room, looking ominously grave.
'Well, Mr. Boldero,' Maud said, with an unsuccessful attempt at gaiety and a dread of the answer which she would receive, 'why have you come back? Do you want me to give you some tea or to receive some advice?'
'Have you heard from Sutton to-day?' said the other, not heeding her inquiry.
'No,' said Maud, turning sick at heart and deadly white; 'why do you ask? Quick, quick!'
'Because I have bad accounts of him from Dustypore. You must not be alarmed.'