Then, after a few moments, full consciousness came back to her, and a sudden cry of rapture broke from the pale lips.  “O God!” she exclaimed, “am I set free?”

“Yes, dear Mrs. Holbrook, you are free, never again to go back to that cruel place.  O, to think that you should be used so, and I so near!”

Marian lifted her head from Ellen’s shoulder, and recognised her with a second cry of delight.

“Ellen, is it you?  Then I am safe; I must be safe with you.”

“Safe! yes, dear.  I would die sooner than any harm should come to you again.  Who could have brought this cruelty about? who could have shut you up in that room?”

“My father,” Marian answered with a shudder.  “He wanted my money, I suppose; and instead of killing me, he shut me up in that place.”

She said no more just then, being too weak to say much; and Ellen, who was employed in soothing and comforting her, did not want her to talk.  It was afterwards, when she had been established in her old rooms at the Grange, and had taken a little breakfast, that she told Ellen something more about her captivity.

“O, Ellen, if I were to tell you what I have suffered!  But no, there are no words can tell that.  It’s not that they ill-used me.  The girl who waited on me brought me good food, and even tried to make me comfortable in her rough way; but to sit there day after day, Ellen, alone, with only a dim light from the top of the window above the wood-stack; to sit there wondering about my husband, whether he was searching for me still, and would ever find me, or whether, as was more likely, he had given me up for dead.  Think of me, Ellen, if you can, sitting there for weeks and months in my despair, trying to reckon the days sometimes by the aid of some old newspaper which the girl brought me now and then, at other times losing count of them altogether.”

“Dear Mrs. Holbrook, I can’t understand it even yet.  Tell me how it all came about—­how they ever lured you into that place.”

“It was easy enough, Ellen; I wasn’t conscious when they took me there.  The story is very short.  You remember that day when you left the Grange, how happy I was, looking forward to my husband’s return, and thinking of the good news I had to tell him.  We were to be rich, and our lives free and peaceful henceforward; and I had seen him suffer so much for the want of money.  It was the morning after you left when the post brought me a letter from my father—­a letter with the Malsham post-mark.  I had seen him in town, as you know, and was scarcely surprised that he should write to me.  But I was surprised to find him so near me, and the contents of the letter were very perplexing.  My father entreated me to meet him on the river-side pathway, between Malsham station and this house.  He had been informed of my habits, he said, and that I was accustomed to walk there.  That was curious, when, so far as I knew, he had sever been near this place; but I hardly thought about the strangeness of it then.  He begged me so earnestly to see him; it was a matter of life or death, he said.  What could I do, Nelly?  He was my father, and I felt that I owed him some duty.  I could not refuse to see him; and if he had some personal objection to coming here, it seemed a small thing for me to take the trouble to go and meet him.  I could but hear what he had to say.”