Looking from one to the other of the objects around her, Anne’s eyes rested on the partition wall which divided the room from the room next to it.  The wall was not broken by a door of communication, it had nothing placed against it but a wash-hand-stand and two chairs.

“Who sleeps in the next room?” said Anne.

Hester Dethridge pointed down to the drawing-room in which they had left Geoffrey, Geoffrey slept in the room.

Anne led the way out again into the passage.

“Show me the second room,” she said.

The second room was also in front of the house.  More ugliness (of first-rate quality) in the paper and the carpet.  Another heavy mahogany bedstead; but, this time, a bedstead with a canopy attached to the head of it—­supporting its own curtains.  Anticipating Anne’s inquiry, on this occasion, Hester looked toward the next room, at the back of the cottage, and pointed to herself.  Anne at once decided on choosing the second room; it was the farthest from Geoffrey.  Hester waited while she wrote the address at which her luggage would be found (at the house of the musical agent), and then, having applied for, and received her directions as to the evening meal which she should send up stairs, quitted the room.

Left alone, Anne secured the door, and threw herself on the bed.  Still too weary to exert her mind, still physically incapable of realizing the helplessness and the peril of her position, she opened a locket that hung from her neck, kissed the portrait of her mother and the portrait of Blanche placed opposite to each other inside it, and sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Meanwhile Geoffrey repeated his final orders to the lad, at the cottage gate.

“When you have got the luggage, you are to go to the lawyer.  If he can come here to-night, you will show him the way.  If he can’t come, you will bring me a letter from him.  Make any mistake in this, and it will be the worst day’s work you ever did in your life.  Away with you, and don’t lose the train.”

The lad ran off.  Geoffrey waited, looking after him, and turning over in his mind what had been done up to that time.

“All right, so far,” he said to himself.  “I didn’t ride in the cab with her.  I told her before witnesses I didn’t forgive her, and why I had her in the house.  I’ve put her in a room by herself.  And if I must see her, I see her with Hester Dethridge for a witness.  My part’s done—­let the lawyer do his.”

He strolled round into the back garden, and lit his pipe.  After a while, as the twilight faded, he saw a light in Hester’s sitting-room on the ground-floor.  He went to the window.  Hester and the servant-girl were both there at work.  “Well?” he asked.  “How about the woman up stairs?” Hester’s slate, aided by the girl’s tongue, told him all about “the woman” that was to be told.  They had taken up to her room tea and an omelet; and they had been obliged to wake her from a sleep.