Zillah dried her eyes, feeling that she had betrayed herself for nought, and shivering, asked to return to the drawing-room. As they entered through the somewhat narrow doorway, a slender, white-clad figure rose from the embrasure formed by the window. Coming from without into the glare of the artificial light, Ferdinand could scarcely believe his eyes; but he was not deceived—it was indeed Raie. “I was so hot that I could not stay in bed, Ferdie,” she explained, putting her arm confidingly in his. “Besides, I could not let you go without saying good-bye properly, dearest, if I had fifty colds.” And clinging to him like a child, she drew him into the library, whilst Zillah was left to nurse her anger alone. Watching them depart, her heart burned with impotent rage, as she realised how miserably she had been defeated. It seemed to her that failure was written right across her life, that she was pursued by a hard and inexorable fate. Gifted with a good voice and personal charms of no mean order, she had been ambitious—over ambitious to do well. Consequently she had frequently overreached herself when just at the point of success. She was at enmity with God, the world, and herself; and she was obliged to acknowledge it—she had only herself to blame. Nevertheless, her courage revived when her first feelings of depression had dissolved. “He goes to England to-morrow without me,” she said to herself, in a whisper. “Never mind, I shall soon follow him up. In England I shall at least be happier than here. Assimilation is the way—I ought to have done it long ago. Fool that I was to consider the Montellas! They are intoxicated with their Judaism—but I—I—am a total abstainer from Judaism.” And then she laughed hysterically at her feeble joke. She was clearly much overwrought. BOOK III THE LAST OF THE EDICT “_And it shall come to pass, after that I have plucked them out, I will return, and have compassion on them, and will bring them again, every man to his heritage, and every man to his land._”—JEREMIAH xii. 15. CHAPTER I ENGLAND ONCE MORE