it asked unanswerable questions about his surprising return from New York, and his pallor, and the tremor in his voice, and his swift departure.  Suddenly she knew that she was planning to have the girls out of the house to-morrow afternoon between four and five o’clock....  Her spine shivered, she grew painfully hot, and tears rushed to her eyes.  She pitied herself profoundly.  She said that she did not know what was the matter with her, or what was going to happen.  She could not give names to things.  She only felt that she was too violently alive.

‘Now, missis,’ John roused her.  The carriage had stopped and he had already descended.  She got out last, and Carpenter drove away while John was still fumbling in his hip-pocket for the latchkey.  The night was humid and very dark.  Leonora and the girls stood waiting on the gravel, and John groped his way into the blackness of the portico to unfasten the door.  A faint gleam from the hall-gas came through the leaded fanlight.  This scarcely perceptible glow and the murmur of John’s expletives were all that came to the women from the mystery of the house.  The key grated in the lock, and the door opened.

‘G——­d d——­n!’ Stanway exclaimed distinctly, with fierce annoyance.  He had fallen headlong into the hall, and his silk hat could be heard hopping towards the staircase.

’Pa!  ’Milly protested, shocked.

John sprang up, fuming, turned the gas on to the full, and rushed back to the doorway.

‘Ah!’ he shouted.  ’I knew it was a tramp lying there.  Get up.  Is the beggar asleep?’

They all bent down, startled into gravity, to examine a form which lay in the portico, nearly parallel with the step and below it.

‘It’s Uncle Meshach,’ said Ethel.  ‘Oh! mother!’

‘Then my aunt’s had another attack,’ cried John, ’and he’s come up to tell us, and—­Milly, run for Carpenter.’

It seemed to Leonora, as with sudden awe she vaguely figured an august and capricious power which conferred experience on mortals like a wonderful gift, that that bestowing hand was never more full than when it had given most.

CHAPTER IX

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

While Prince, tethered summarily outside the stable-door with all his harness on, was trying in vain to understand this singular caprice on the part of Carpenter, Carpenter and the head of the house lifted Uncle Meshach’s form and carried it into the hall.  The women watched, ceasing their wild useless questions.

‘Into the breakfast-room, on the sofa,’ said John, breathing hard, to the man.

‘No, no,’ Leonora intervened, ’you had better take him upstairs at once, to Ethel and Milly’s bedroom.’

The procession, undignified and yet impressive, came to a halt, and Carpenter, who was holding Meshach’s feet, glanced with canine anxiety from his master to his mistress.