She flung herself down on her bed, laughing and crying with incredulous joy. There could be but one reason, he must have found out from Egerton that she was here; must have wearied for her as she had for him, and come himself to tell her that that letter was all a lie; that she was still his wife, always had been and always would be, world without end. “Thank God! Oh, thank God!” gasped Andria Erle, face down on her bed. She knew now that she could never forget the man who had been all hers, never look on any other but with indifferent eyes. She could forgive Egerton for all the mystery that was round her, could thank him even with that smarting wound at the back of her neck that had brought her here. She had been but half-alive all these weeks, a ghost of herself. Now she could rise again as from her grave, and dress herself to go down fresh and fair when Raimond sent for her. For the first time she was glad the French maid had disobeyed her and packed the gowns she had never meant to wear again. Not even a thought of all she had to forgive crossed her mind. He was here, he had come for her; that was all. She rose with feverish haste. There was a pale lilac gown he had liked--“he said I looked like spring in it,” she thought, hunting in her boxes till she found it. She looked like spring indeed when she had it on and remembered the day he had bought it for her. It deepened her blue-gray eyes into violet, set off her cream-white skin and ruddy hair. Heriot, the past night, forgotten as if they had never been, she stared at herself. “I’m handsomer than I was,” she thought, with a leaping heart, “fairer, softer! He will be glad, glad when he sees me. But I won’t go down till he sends.” The soft lilac stuff fell in lovely folds round her as she turned at a knock at the door. “Come in!” she cried; she could not make her voice quiet. “Come in.” It was Amelia Jane, carrying her breakfast. “I thought you was sick!” she cried. “My soul, I dunno when I see you look so well.” “I’m better--well! Tell me”--the question came beyond her will--“did--did Mr. Egerton send me any message? Is Miss Beryl at breakfast?” “Yes’m. She an’ Mr. Egerton an’ another gentleman. No, he didn’t send no message.” “Very well,” she said, her voice oddly flat and unmusical. “Put the breakfast down, please, Amelia.” But when the woman was gone she made no attempt to eat; only sank into a chair as if her new-found strength had somehow failed her. If she had been in Raimond Erle’s place, could she have waited all this time? “Not one minute of it,” said her starving heart. “Not one minute!” The color faded from her face as she sat and watched the clock. Ten minutes, twenty, three-quarters of an hour--and he had not come, though breakfast must long have been over. She could not sit still and wait like this, dared not go down and meet him before the others.