While Lady Vera's friends are seeking with heavy hearts some clew to her strange fate, the fair young countess, half distracted with grief, remains a closely-guarded captive in the ruined mansion in the lonely wood. In spite of all her tears and protestations Betsy Robson persists in believing her to be a dangerous lunatic, and in treating her as such, albeit always kind and complaisant as to an ailing child. The summer days glide slowly past, each one bearing some portion of hope from Vera's lonely heart. With the dawn of each day she had hoped for release--with the sunset of each day she had wept over her disappointment. The days were so long and lonely without books, music or occupation to beguile them of their length and dreariness. It seemed to Lady Vera almost as if she were dead and buried, living in this lonely house, seeing, hearing no one save stolid Betsy Robson, who glided about like another ghost in this strange world of the dead. "If rescue does not come soon I shall either die or go mad, as that woman already believes me to be," Lady Vera tells herself in a passion of despair. She wonders why Philip does not come to her aid. In her despair and loneliness bitter thoughts begin to creep into her mind. "Perhaps he has no care over me now that I am lost to him forever," she thinks. "He has turned to Miss Montgomery or Lady Eva, perhaps. Either one would be glad enough to console him." From the world without there came no answer to these silent accusations against her lost lover. The world seemed dead to her as she appeared to it. All her companions were memory and sorrow. As the weeks rounded slowly into a month, Lady Vera's fierce anger against Leslie Noble, her restlessness, her impatience, began to settle down into the calmness of despair. She gave up pacing the floor, and weeping and grieving over her captivity like some poor caged bird beating the bars of its prison with unavailing wings. She began to sit still in her chair for long hours daily, with her white hands folded on her lap and her dark eyes fixed on vacancy--long hours in which the color and roundness fled from her face and form, leaving behind a startling pallor and delicacy that frightened Mrs. Robson, who thought that her charge had developed a new phase of her mania. "Them still and cunning ones is always the most dangerous, so I've heard," she confides to the tabby cat that is her only companion in the kitchen. "I do wish she would ha' give up that sharp little knife she carries in her bosom. And I do wish Mr. Noble would come and see her. I can't think what keeps him away this long. He said he should come soon. Lucky he laid in a good store of provisions, or we might starve to death in this lonely wilderness afore he comes." She busies herself in preparing little dainties to tempt the appetite of her charge, but Lady Vera scarcely tastes the delicate morsels. "Be you a-grievin' for your husband, my poor dear?" Mrs. Robson asks her kindly one day.