As Hilda read these ominous words a chill like that of death seemed to strike to her inmost soul. Her disappointment on her arrival here had already been bitter enough. She had looked upon Munich as the place where she would surely find the end of her journey, and obtain the reward of her labors. But now the object of her search was once more removed, and a new journey more fatiguing than the others was set before her. Could she bear it?--she who even now felt the old weakness, and something even worse, coming back irresistibly upon her. Could she, indeed, bear another journey? This question she put to herself half hopelessly; but almost immediately her resolute soul asserted itself, and proudly answered it. Bear such a journey? Ay, this journey she could bear, and not only this, but many more. Even though her old weakness was coming back over her frail form, still she rose superior to that weakness, and persisted in her determination to go on, and still on, without giving up her purpose, till she reached Lord Chetwynde, even though it should only be at the moment of her arrival to drop dead at his feet. There was more now to stimulate her than the determination of a resolute and invincible will. The words of that last note had a dark and ominous meaning, which affected her more strongly by far than any of the others. The messages which they bore had not been of so fearful an import as this. The first said that the "business" was progressing _very favorably_. The second, that it was progressing _most favorably_. This last one told her that the business _would soon be brought to a successful issue_. Well she knew the meaning of these words. In these different messages she saw so many successive stages of the terrific work which was going on, and to avert which she had endured so much, at the cost of such suffering to herself. She saw the form of Lord Chetwynde failing more and more every day, and still, while he struggled against the approach of insidious disease, yielding, in spite of himself, to its resistless progress. She saw him going from place to place, summoning the physicians of each town where he stopped, and giving up both town and physicians in despair. She saw, also, how all the time there stood by his side one who was filled with one dark purpose, in the accomplishment of which he was perseveringly cruel and untiringly patient--one who watched the growing weakness of his victim with cold-blooded interest, noting every decrease of strength, and every sign which might give token of the end--one, too, who thought that she was hastening after him to join in his work, and was only delaying in order to join him when all was over, so as to give him her congratulations, and bestow upon him the reward which he had made her promise that she would grant.