“Have you anything more to say to me?”

“Not to-night,” said John, sternly.  “I am wearied with well-doing.  I have been preaching, calling sinners, like yourself, to a better life.  To-morrow I will speak with you again, I will endeavour to snatch a brand from the burning.”

“Good-night,” said Ida.  She paused with her hand on the door.  “Cousin John, you came to me when I was in great trouble; you offered me a home when I was homeless; I think you have been as kind as you knew how to be, and I want to thank you.  I daresay it is my fault that I have not got on better with you all.  I am not so bad as you think—­but we will say no more about that.  I do not want you to consider me ungrateful; for indeed, I am grateful for the shelter you have given me, and I shall always remember that you came to my aid when I was in sore need.  Will you please ask my cousin and Isabel to forgive me—­for having unwittingly caused them so much trouble?  Good-night.”

“Good-night,” said John Heron, grimly.  “I should be comforted if I could think that you were speaking from your heart; but I fear that you are not—­I fear that you are not!  Oh, may that heart be melted! may you be brought to see the peril of your evil ways!” Followed by this devout prayer, Ida went up to her room.  As she paced up and down she tried to tell herself that the whole thing was too ridiculous, was too much like a farce to make her wretched; but she felt unutterably miserable, and she knew that she could no longer endure Laburnum Villa and the petty tyranny and vindictiveness of these relations.

Poverty, hardship, she could have borne patiently and without complaining; but there are some things more intolerable to a high-spirited girl, such as Ida, than poverty or physical hardship—­there are some things which hurt more than actual blows.  She felt stifling, choking; she knew that, happen what might, she could not remain under her cousin’s roof, eat the bread of his charity, for another day.  She shuddered as she pictured herself meeting them at the breakfast-table, facing Mrs. Heron’s spiteful face, Isabel’s tear-swollen eyes, and her cousin John’s sanctimonious sermon.

She would have to go.

She thrust a few things into a bag and took out her purse and counted the contents.  They amounted to six pounds and a few shillings; but small though the sum was, she thought that it would maintain her until she could find some way of earning a livelihood, though at the moment she had not the least idea what she could find to do.  Without undressing, she threw herself on the bed and tried to sleep; but her heart ached too acutely and her brain was too active to permit of sleep; and, try as she would, her mind would travel back to those brief days of happiness at Herondale, and she was haunted by the remembrance of Stafford and the love which she had lost; and at times that past was almost effaced by the vision of Stafford seated beside Maude Falconer at the concert.