Her remaining days at Kingdon Hall were spent in a state of such listlessness and inertia that Nora began to fear that she was going to be ill. She urged her mistress to send for the doctor; but, for answer, Bettina burst into tears, declaring that she was not ill, and begging Nora to do everything for her that was necessary to get her off on the steamer on which she had taken passage, as she felt unable to do anything herself. How the intervening hours passed she never knew; but, as if taking part in a dream, she went through them all, and at last found herself settled in her state-room, with Nora to take care of her, and no one to spy on her or notice what she did. Asking Nora, as piteously as a child, to help her to undress, she went to bed, and from that bed she did not rise until the ship had touched another shore, and the breadth of the world lay between herself and Horace. How glad she would have been to lie there and sail on forever, freed from her responsibility to the future, as she was from that to the past! CHAPTER XV It was when Bettina was a matter of three hours out at sea that Lord Hurdly arrived at Kingdon Hall, and, on being admitted, ordered the servant to say to Lady Hurdly that he wished to see her. His surprise was great when the man informed him that Lady Hurdly had that day sailed for America. Dismissing the servant, he went to the library and shut himself up there alone. How strangely was this house altered to him in one moment's time! Just now he had felt a presence in it which had made every atom of it significant. Now, how dead, empty, meaningless, it had suddenly become! The effect of this change was almost startling to him, and for the first time he had the courage to face himself and to demand of his own soul an explanation. He was a man of a peculiarly uncomplex nature. When, on meeting Bettina, he for the first time fell deeply in love, he had looked upon the matter as a finality, and he had never ceased so to regard it. When she deserted him, without giving him a chance to speak, he had, in the overwhelming bitterness of his heart, forsworn all women. It had never occurred to him to put another in Bettina's place. For a long time a passionate resentment possessed him. When he knew that Bettina had married his cousin, this resentment had had two objects to feed upon instead of one; but at first the bitterness of his anger against the being in whom he had supremely believed greatly outweighed that against the being in whom he had never believed. Lord Hurdly had never had it in his power to wound and anger him as Bettina could. So, when he got transferred from St. Petersburg to Simla, it was with the instinct of removing himself as far as possible from Bettina. Of the other he scarcely thought.