She grew restless: she must carry out her
plan somehow. When Hamilton's life was completely wrecked, she
would be ready to return to England--not till then; and she lay
awake at nights grinding her long, narrow, wolf-like teeth together
as she thought of Hamilton in the desert bungalow.
One morning, after a nearly sleepless night, she got up and looked
critically at her face in the glass. Old and haggard as usual it
looked; but to-day, in addition to age and care, a specially evil
determination sat upon it.
"Life is practically done with," she thought, looking at it. "I
have only this one thing to care about now, and I'll do it somehow
before I go. If I can't enjoy my life, he shan't enjoy his."
She turned from the glass, and commenced dressing. The evil look
deepened on her face from minute to minute, and the word "Beast!"
came at intervals through her teeth.
Outside the window of her charming room all was waking in the
joyous dawn of the East. Long shadows lay across the velvet green
slopes of the Commissioner's lawn as the sun rose behind the
majestic palms that shaded it; floods of golden light were rippling
softly over roses and stephanotis, opening bud after bud to the
azure above them; the gay call of the birds rang through the clear
morning air; the perroquets swung in ecstasy on the bamboo
branches, crying out shrill comments on each other's toilet.
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