No wonder I distrusted myself; no wonder also my will stood out against my timidity.  It was a struggle, then; a proud, wild resolve against constitutional cowardice.

Those who have ever had cast upon them more than their strength seemed framed to bear—­the weak, the aspiring, the adventurous and self-sacrificing in will, and the faltering in nerve—­will understand the kind of agony which I sometimes endured.

But, again, consolation would come, and it seemed to me that I must be exaggerating my risk in the coming crisis; and certain at least, if my father believed it attended with real peril, he would never have wished to see me involved in it.  But the silence under which I was bound was terrifying—­double so when the danger was so shapeless and undivulged.

I was soon to understand it all—­soon, too, to know all about my father’s impending journey, whither, with what visitor, and why guarded from me with so awful a mystery.

That day there came a lively and goodnatured letter from Lady Knollys.  She was to arrive at Knowl in two or three days’ time.  I thought my father would have been pleased, but he seemed apathetic and dejected.

’One does not always feel quite equal to Monica.  But for you—­yes, thank God.  I wish she could only stay, Maud, for a month or two; I may be going then, and would be glad—­provided she talks about suitable things—­very glad, Maud, to leave her with you for a week or so.’

There was something, I thought, agitating my father secretly that day.  He had the strange hectic flush I had observed when he grew excited in our interview in the garden about Uncle Silas.  There was something painful, perhaps even terrible, in the circumstances of the journey he was about to make, and from my heart I wished the suspense were over, the annoyance past, and he returned.

That night my father bid me good-night early and went upstairs.  After I had been in bed some little time, I heard his hand-bell ring.  This was not usual.  Shortly after I heard his man, Ridley, talking with Mrs. Rusk in the gallery.  I could not be mistaken in their voices.  I knew not why I was startled and excited, and had raised myself to listen on my elbow.  But they were talking quietly, like persons giving or taking an ordinary direction, and not in the haste of an unusual emergency.

Then I heard the man bid Mrs. Rusk good-night and walk down the gallery to the stairs, so that I concluded he was wanted no more, and all must therefore be well.  So I laid myself down again, though with a throbbing at my heart, and an ominous feeling of expectation, listening and fancying footsteps.

I was going to sleep when I heard the bell ring again; and, in a few minutes, Mrs. Rusk’s energetic step passed along the gallery; and, listening intently, I heard, or fancied, my father’s voice and hers in dialogue.  All this was very unusual, and again I was, with a beating heart, leaning with my elbow on my pillow.