“The railway will do perfectly well for me,” Anne replied.

Instead of accepting the answer, and dropping the subject, he asked her to reconsider her decision.  There was an absent, uneasy expression in his eye as he begged her not to consult economy at the expense of her own comfort.  He appeared to have some reason of his own for preventing her from leaving the room.  “Sit d own a minute, and think before you decide,” he said.  Having forced her to take a chair, he put his head outside the door and directed the lad to go up stairs, and see if he had left his pipe in his bedroom.  “I want you to go in comfort, as a lady should,” he repeated, with the uneasy look more marked than ever.  Before Anne could reply, the lad’s voice reached them from the bedroom floor, raised in shrill alarm, and screaming “Fire!”

Geoffrey ran up stairs.  Anne followed him.  The lad met them at the top of the stairs.  He pointed to the open door of Anne’s room.  She was absolutely certain of having left her lighted candle, when she went down to Geoffrey, at a safe distance from the bed-curtains.  The bed-curtains, nevertheless, were in a blaze of fire.

There was a supply of water to the cottage, on the upper floor.  The bedroom jugs and cans usually in their places at an earlier hour, were standing that night at the cistern.  An empty pail was left near them.  Directing the lad to bring him water from these resources, Geoffrey tore down the curtains in a flaming heap, partly on the bed and partly on the sofa near it.  Using the can and the pail alternately, as the boy brought them, he drenched the bed and the sofa.  It was all over in little more than a minute.  The cottage was saved.  But the bed-furniture was destroyed; and the room, as a matter of course, was rendered uninhabitable, for that night at least, and probably for more nights to come.

Geoffrey set down the empty pail; and, turning to Anne, pointed across the passage.

“You won’t be much inconvenienced by this,” he said.  “You have only to shift your quarters to the spare room.”

With the assistance of the lad, he moved Anne’s boxes, and the chest of drawers, which had escaped damage, into the opposite room.  This done, he cautioned her to be careful with her candles for the future—­and went down stairs, without waiting to hear what she said in reply.  The lad followed him, and was dismissed for the night.

Even in the confusion which attended the extinguishing of the fire, the conduct of Hester Dethridge had been remarkable enough to force itself on the attention of Anne.

She had come out from her bedroom, when the alarm was given; had looked at the flaming curtains; and had drawn back, stolidly submissive, into a corner to wait the event.  There she had stood—­to all appearance, utterly indifferent to the possible destruction of her own cottage.  The fire extinguished, she still waited impenetrably in her corner, while the chest of drawers and the boxes were being moved—­then locked the door, without even a passing glance at the scorched ceiling and the burned bed-furniture—­put the key into her pocket—­and went back to her room.