For the next quarter of an hour Avery was fully occupied in restoring her, again assisted by Ronald.  When she came to herself, it was only to shed anguished tears on Avery’s shoulder and repeat over and over again that she could not bear it, she could not bear it.

Avery was of the same opinion, but she did not say so.  She strove instead with the utmost tenderness to persuade her to drink some tea.  But even when she had succeeded in this, Mrs. Lorimer continued to be so exhausted and upset that at last, growing uneasy, Avery despatched Ronald for the doctor.

She sent Olive for the children’s nurse and took counsel with her as to getting her mistress back to bed.  But Nurse instantly discouraged this suggestion.

“For the Lord’s sake, ma’am, don’t take her upstairs!” she said.  “The master’s up there with Miss Gracie, and he’s whipping the poor lamb something cruel.  He made me undress her first.”

“Oh, I cannot have that!” exclaimed Avery.  “Stay here a minute, Nurse, while I go up!”

She rushed upstairs in furious anger to the room in which the three little girls slept.  The door was locked, but the sounds within were unmistakable.  Gracie was plainly receiving severe punishment from her irate parent.  Her agonized crying tore Avery’s heart.

She threw herself at the door and battered at it with her fists.  “Mr. Lorimer!” she called.  “Mr. Lorimer, let me in!”

There was no response.  Possibly she was not even heard, for the dreadful crying continued and, mingled with it, the swish of the slender little riding-switch which in the earlier, less harassed days of his married life the Reverend Stephen had kept for the horse he rode, and which now he kept for his children.

They were terrible moments for Avery that she spent outside that locked door, listening impotently to a child’s piteous cries for mercy from one who knew it not.  But they came to an end at last.  Gracie’s distress sank into anguished sobs, and Avery knew that the punishment was over.  Mr. Lorimer had satisfied both his sense of duty and his malice.

She heard him speak in cold, cutting tones.  “I have punished you more severely than I had ever expected to find necessary, and I hope that the lesson will be sufficient.  But I warn you, Grace, most solemnly that I shall watch your behaviour very closely for the future, and if I detect in you the smallest indication of the insolence and defiance for which I have inflicted this punishment upon you to-day I shall repeat the punishment fourfold.  No!  Not another word!” as Gracie made some inarticulate utterance.  “Or you will compel me to repeat it to-night!”

And with that, he walked quietly to the door and unlocked it.

Avery had ceased to beat upon it; she met him white and stiff in the doorway.

“I have just sent for the doctor,” she said.  “Mrs. Lorimer has been taken ill.”

She passed him at once with the words, not looking at him, for she could not trust herself.  Straight to Gracie, huddled on the floor in her night-dress, she went, and lifted the child bodily to her bed.