“I don’t suppose I have,” retorted Miss Dane; “but I have certainly heard your voice.”

“No!  Have you, now?  Where, I wonder?”

Mollie gazed at her wistfully, scrutinizingly.  Surely that face, that voice, were familiar; and yet, as soon as she strove to place them, all became confusion.  She turned away with a sigh.

“It’s of no use.  I suppose you’re in league with the rest.  I think the people in this house have hearts harder than stone.”

“I’m very sorry for you, miss, if that’s what you mean,” said Mrs. Susan Sharpe, respectfully.  “Yours is a very sad affliction, indeed.”

“A very sad affliction!  Do you mean being imprisoned here?”

“Oh, dear, no, miss!” looking embarrassed.  “I mean—­I’m sure, I beg your pardon, miss—­I mean—­”

“You mean you pretend to believe Doctor Oleander’s romance,” interrupted Mollie, contemptuously.  “You mean I am crazy!”

“Don’t be angry, miss,” said Mrs. Sharpe, deprecatingly.  “I wouldn’t give offense for the world.”

“Look at me,” said Mollie, impetuously—­“look me in the face, Susan Sharpe, and tell me if I look like one insane!”

Mrs. Sharpe turned the mild light of the green glasses on the pale, excited young face.

“No, miss, I can’t say you do; but it isn’t for me to judge.  I’m a poor woman, trying to turn an honest penny—­”

“By helping the greatest scoundrel that ever escaped the gallows to keep prisoner an unoffending girl!  Is that how you try to turn an honest penny, Susan Sharpe?”

Susan Sharpe, shrinking, as well as she might, from the fiery flashing of two angry blue eyes, murmured an inaudible something, and busied herself among the dishes.

“Listen to me, woman,” cried Mollie, pushing back her wild, loose hair, “and pity me, if you have a woman’s heart.  This man—­this Doctor Oleander—­led me into a trap, inveigled me from home, brought me here, and keeps me here a prisoner.  To further his own base ends he gives out that I am insane.  My friends are in the greatest distress about me, and I am almost frantic by being kept here.  Help me to escape—­my friends in Now York are rich and powerful—­help me, Susan Sharpe, and you will never know want more!”

Mrs. Susan Sharpe had keen ears.  Even in the midst of this excited address she had heard a stealthy footstep on the creaking stairs—­a footstep that had paused just outside the door.  She took her cue, and made no sign.

“I’m very sorry, miss,” slightly raising her voice—­“very sorry for you, indeed.  What you say may be all very true, but it makes no difference to me.  My duty’s plain enough.  I’m paid for it, I’ve promised to do it, and I’ll do it.”

“And that is—­”

“To wait upon you.  I’ll be your faithful attendant while I’m here; but to help you to escape I can’t.  Doctor Oleander tells me you’re insane; you tell me yourself you’re not insane.  I suppose you ought to know best; but I’ve been in lunatic asylums before now, and I never yet knew one of ’em to admit there was anything the matter with ’em.”