On the following days, Mrs. Fellowes proved invaluable in all preparations for the departure from Clive's Road. She observed with much concern that Hester seemed in a sort of stupor and forbore to obtrude her sympathy. She had as yet exchanged but few words with her friend, and when she had occasion to ask some needful question Hester would reply mechanically. She sat now at the evening hour by her friend's side in the verandah, glancing anxiously at the listless, folded hands, the wan face, and the dry, despairing eyes gazing up at the dark blue star-strewn sky as if seeing strange visions. Happening to meet Mrs. Fellowes' inquiring glance, Hester stretched out her hand to clasp hers. "How good you have been to me!" she murmured, "and so patient!" Then she added, as if in explanation. "I can't speak of it yet. I don't seem able even to feel. My heart seems shrivelled up. I am like something ayah showed me this morning. She was asking me which of her possessions she must take across the black water, and I could only think of one at the moment--a gay-coloured new leathern bottle she had once showed to me with pride. She went and fetched it from her godown and said: 'See, missus, what that bottle done come to!' and she held up a black, shrunken thing that had been hanging in the smoke of her godown since I came to Madras. I think that bottle and my heart have had the same history these last months. Both have been shrivelled in the smoke of scorching fires!" "Why, there's a verse in the Psalms like that," said Mrs. Fellowes briskly, glad that the silence had been broken. She took her little old Bible from her bag. "Here it is, in the longest Psalm, and a very graphic description the Psalmist gives of himself. 'I am become like a bottle in the smoke.' He must have felt like that too, dear child, but if we read further we'll find how he turned to the Healer--the Restorer, till he was able to say, 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted.'" Hester did not speak at once. "Thank you, dear friend," she said at length, and Mrs. Fellowes could see that the torpid air had passed, that life and thought had come back. "You have done me good! I think I see a little through the smoke now. I shall go and give Rosie a last lesson after all," she added, rising. "It is so good of you to promise to take care of the little maid till ayah comes back again. No more Mrs. Harbottles," she added, with something of her old bright smile. "Yes, the smoke will rub off by degrees," thought Mrs. Fellowes, as she looked after Hester's retreating figure. "This terrible experience must leave its mark. 'A bottle in the smoke' she has been truly all her days here! Thank God the process has not been soiling! What life must have been with such a husband it passes me to understand! He hadn't a single redeeming point--except his good looks; and the Colonel even questions them. But poor Rayner had a beautiful face there is no doubt."