The lady of the Castle spent the greater part of her time in her boudoir, alone, never tolerating the presence of even her maid except when it was absolutely necessary, but requiring her to be always near in case of any need for her presence arising. The maid attributed this strange seclusion to the effects of grief over her recent bereavement, or perhaps anxiety about her husband; while the other servants soon began to conjecture that her husband's absence arose from some quarrel with a wife whose haughty and imperious demeanor they all had occasion to feel. It was thus, then, that Hilda had entered upon her new and perilous position, to attain to which she had plotted so deeply and dared so much. Now that she had attained it, there was not an hour, not a moment of the day, in which she did not pay some penalty for the past by a thousand anxieties. To look forward to such a thing as this was one thing; but to be here, where she had so often longed to be, was quite another thing. It was the hackneyed fable of Damocles with the sword over his head over again. She was standing on treacherous ground, which at any moment might give way beneath her feet and plunge her in an abyss of ruin. To live thus face to face with possible destruction, to stare death in the face every day, was not a thing conducive either to mildness or to tenderness in any nature, much less in one like hers. In that boudoir where she spent so much of her time, while her maid wondered how she employed herself, her occupation consisted of but one thing. It was the examination of papers, followed by deep thought over the result of that examination. Every mail brought to her address newspapers both from home and abroad. Among the latter were a number of Indian papers, published in various places, including some that were printed in remote towns in the north. There were the Delhi _Gazette_, the Allahabad _News_, and the Lahore _Journal_, all of which were most diligently scanned by her. Next to these were the _Times_ and the _Army and Navy Gazette_. No other papers or books, or prints of any kind, had any interest in her eyes.