Rachel bent with confident intimacy over the old lady’s shoulder, and they read the burglary column together, Rachel interrupting herself for an instant to pick up Mrs. Maldon’s ball of black wool which had slipped to the floor.  The Signal reporter had omitted none of the classic cliches proper to the subject, and such words and phrases as “jemmy,” “effected an entrance,” “the servant, now thoroughly alarmed,” “stealthy footsteps,” “escaped with their booty,” seriously disquieted both of the women—­caused a sudden sensation of sinking in the region of the heart.  Yet neither would put the secret fear into speech, for each by instinct felt that a fear once uttered is strengthened and made more real.  Living solitary and unprotected by male sinews, in a house which, though it did not stand alone, was somewhat withdrawn from the town, they knew themselves the ideal prey of conventional burglars with masks, dark lanterns, revolvers, and jemmies.  They were grouped together like some symbolic sculpture, and with all their fortitude and common sense they still in unconscious attitude expressed the helpless and resigned fatalism of their sex before certain menaces of bodily danger, the thrilled, expectant submission of women in a city about to be sacked.

Nothing could save them if the peril entered the house.  But they would not say aloud:  “Suppose they came here!  How terrible!” They would not even whisper the slightest apprehension.  They just briefly discussed the matter with a fine air of indifferent aloofness, remaining calm while the brick walls and the social system which defended that bright and delicate parlour from the dark, savage universe without seemed to crack and shiver.

Mrs. Maldon, suddenly noticing that one blind was half an inch short of the bottom of the window, rose nervously and pulled it down farther.

“Why didn’t you ask me to do that?” said Rachel, thinking what a fidgety person the old lady was.

Mrs. Maldon replied—­“It’s all right, my dear.  Did you fasten the window on the upstairs landing?”

“As if burglars would try to get in by an upstairs window—­and on the street!” thought Rachel, pityingly impatient.  “However, it’s her house, and I’m paid to do what I’m told,” she added to herself, very sensibly.  Then she said, aloud, in a soothing tone—­

“No, I didn’t.  But I will do it.”

She moved towards the door, and at the same moment a knock on the front door sent a vibration through the whole house.  Nearly all knocks on the front door shook the house; and further, burglars do not generally knock as a preliminary to effecting an entrance.  Nevertheless, both women started—­and were ashamed of starting.

“Surely he’s rather early!” said Mrs. Maldon with an exaggerated tranquillity.

And Rachel, with a similar lack of conviction in her calm gait, went audaciously forth into the dark lobby.

V