Meanwhile, throughout all these days, Hilda's mind was engrossed with the change which had come over her--a change so startling and so unexpected that it found her totally unprepared to deal with it. They met every day at the dinner-table, and at no other times. Here Lord Chetwynde treated her with scrupulous courtesy; yet beyond the extreme limits of that courtesy she found it impossible to advance. Hilda's manner was most humble and conciliatory. She who all her life had felt defiant of others, or worse, now found herself enthralled and subdued by the spell of this man's presence. Her wiliness, her stealthiness, her constant self-control, were all lost and forgotten. She had now to struggle incessantly against that new tenderness which had sprung up unbidden within her. She caught herself looking forward wistfully every day to the time when she could meet him at the table and hear his voice, which, even in its cold, constrained tones, was enough for her happiness. It was in vain that she reproached and even cursed herself for her weakness. The weakness none the less existed; and all her life seemed now to centre around this man, who hated her. Into a position like this she had never imagined that she could possibly be brought. All her cunning and all her resources were useless here. This man seemed so completely beyond her control that any effort to win him to her seemed useless. He believed her to be his wife, he believed himself bound by honor to secure her happiness, and yet his abhorrence of her was so strong that he never made any effort to gain her for himself. Now Hilda saw with bitterness that she had gone too far, and that her plans and her plots were recoiling upon her own head. They had been too successful. The sin of Lord Chetwynde's wife had in his eyes proved unpardonable. Hilda's whole life now became a series of alternate struggles against her own heart, and longings after another who was worse than indifferent to her. Her own miserable weakness, so unexpected, and yet so complete and hopeless, filled her at once with anger and dismay. To find all her thoughts both by day and night filled with this one image was at once mortifying and terrible. The very intensity of her feelings, which would not stop short at death itself to gain their object, now made her own sufferings all the greater. Every thing else was forgotten except this one absorbing desire; and her complicated schemes and far-reaching plans were thrust away. They had lost their interest. Henceforth all were reduced to one thought--how to gain Lord Chetwynde to herself.