CHAPTER V.
THE NIGHT WATCH Like all delightful things, Mrs.Nevill Tyson's laughter was short-lived.
When Tyson went up to bed that night between twelve and one, he found his wife sitting by her bedroom fire in the half-darkness.

Evidently contemplation had overtaken her in the act of undressing, for her hair was still untouched, her silk bodice lay beside her on the floor where she had let it fall, and she sat robed in her long dressing-gown.

He came up to her, holding his candle so that the light fell full on her face; it looked strange and pale against the vivid scarlet of her gown.

Her eyes, too, were dim, her mouth had lost its delicate outline, her cheeks seemed to have grown slightly, ever so slightly, fuller, and the skin looked glazed as if by the courses of many tears.

He had noticed these changes before; of late they had come many times in the twelve hours; but to-night it seemed not so much a momentary disfigurement as a sudden precocious maturity, as if nature had stamped her face with the image of what it would be ten, fifteen years hence.