Hester Dethridge bowed her head.  The other two answered, “Yes”—­and turned to go out.

Anne rose.  At a sign from Geoffrey, the servant and the lad waited in the room to hear what she had to say.

“I know nothing in my conduct,” she said, addressing herself to Geoffrey, “which justifies you in telling these people that you don’t forgive me.  Those words applied by you to me are an insult.  I am equally ignorant of what you mean when you speak of defending your good name.  All I understand is, that we are separate persons in this house, and that I am to have a room of my own.  I am grateful, whatever your motives may be, for the arrangement that you have proposed.  Direct one of these two women to show me my room.”

Geoffrey turned to Hester Dethridge.

“Take her up stairs,” he said; “and let her pick which room she pleases.  Give her what she wants to eat or drink.  Bring down the address of the place where her luggage is.  The lad here will go back by railway, and fetch it.  That’s all.  Be off.”

Hester went out.  Anne followed her up the stairs.  In the passage on the upper floor she stopped.  The dull light flickered again for a moment in her eyes.  She wrote on her slate, and held it up to Anne, with these words on it:  “I knew you would come back.  It’s not over yet between you and him.”  Anne made no reply.  She went on writing, with something faintly like a smile on her thin, colorless lips.  “I know something of bad husbands.  Yours is as bad a one as ever stood in shoes.  He’ll try you.”  Anne made an effort to stop her.  “Don’t you see how tired I am?” she said, gently.  Hester Dethridge dropped the slate—­looked with a steady and uncompassionate attention in Anne’s face—­nodded her head, as much as to say, “I see it now”—­and led the way into one of the empty rooms.

It was the front bedroom, over the drawing-room.  The first glance round showed it to be scrupulously clean, and solidly and tastelessly furnished.  The hideous paper on the walls, the hideous carpet on the floor, were both of the best quality.  The great heavy mahogany bedstead, with its curtains hanging from a hook in the ceiling, and with its clumsily carved head and foot on the same level, offered to the view the anomalous spectacle of French design overwhelmed by English execution.  The most noticeable thing in the room was the extraordinary attention which had been given to the defense of the door.  Besides the usual lock and key, it possessed two solid bolts, fastening inside at the top and the bottom.  It had been one among the many eccentric sides of Reuben Limbrick’s character to live in perpetual dread of thieves breaking into his cottage at night.  All the outer doors and all the window shutters were solidly sheathed with iron, and had alarm-bells attached to them on a new principle.  Every one of the bedrooms possessed its two bolts on the inner side of the door.  And, to crown all, on the roof of the cottage was a little belfry, containing a bell large enough to make itself heard at the Fulham police station.  In Reuben Limbrick’s time the rope had communicated with his bedroom.  It hung now against the wall, in the passage outside.