When Lawrence, with some little difficulty, walked across the yard to get the shoes from his trunk, Annie ran after him, and waited at the office door.  “You must not take a step more than necessary,” she said, “and so I won’t make you come back to the house.”

When Lawrence gave her the shoes, and her hand a little squeeze at the same time, he told her that he should sit down immediately and write his letter.

“And I,” said Annie, “will go, and see what I can do with these.”

With the shoes in her pocket, she went up stairs into her aunt’s room, and, after looking around hastily, as if to see that the old lady had not left the ghost of herself in charge, she approached the closet in which the sacred pasteboard box had always been kept.  But the closet was locked.  Turning away she looked about the room.  There was no other place in which there was any probability that the box would be kept.  Then she became nervous; she fancied she heard the click of the yard gate; she would not for anything have her aunt catch her in that room; nor would she take the shoes away with her.  Hastily placing them upon a table she slipped out, and hurried into her own room.

It was about an hour after this, that Mrs Keswick came rapidly up the steps of the front porch.  She had been to Howlett’s to carry a letter which she had written to Miss March, and had there made arrangements to have that letter taken to Midbranch very early the next morning.  She had wished to find some one who would start immediately, but as there was no moon, and as the messenger would arrive after the family were all in bed, she had been obliged to abandon this more energetic line of action.  But the letter would get there soon enough; and if it did not bring down retribution on the head of the man who lodged in her office, and who, she said to herself, had worked himself into her plans, like the rot in a field of potatoes, she would ever after admit that she did not know how to write a letter.  All the way home she had conned over her method of action until Mr Brandon, or a letter, should come from Midbranch.

She had already attacked, together, the unprincipled pair who found shelter in her house, and she now determined to come upon them separately, and torment each soul by itself.  Annie, of course, would come in for the lesser share of the punishment, for the fact that the wretched and depraved Null was no more, had, in a great measure, mitigated her offence.  She was safe, and her aunt intended to hold her fast, and do with her as she would, when the time and Junius came.  But upon Lawrence she would have no mercy.  When she had delivered him into the hands of Mr Brandon, or those of Roberta’s father, or the clutches of the law, she would have nothing more to do with him, but until that time she would make him bewail the day when he deceived and imposed upon her by causing her to believe that he was in love with another when he was, in reality, trying to get possession of her niece.  There were a great many things which she had not thought to say to him in the arbor, but she would pour the whole hot mass upon his head that evening.