’No, no; it is only this sense of sin.  Oh, Ursula, how nice it would be to die, and never do anything wrong again!’ And so she went on bemoaning herself.

I had thought it better to move her into Lady Betty’s room.  It was a large square room opening out of the turret-room, and very light and airy.  I had a little bed put up for my use, so that I could hear her every movement.  I told Mr. Hamilton that I could not feel easy to have her out of my sight; and he quite agreed with me.

In the daytime we carried her into the turret-room.  The little recess formed by the circular window made a charming sitting-room, and just held Gladys’s couch and an easy-chair and a little round table with a basket of hot-house flowers on it.  Mr. Hamilton declared that we looked very cosy when he first found us there.

In the cool of the evening, when Gladys could bear the blind raised, it was very pleasant to sit there looking down on the little oak avenue, where the girls had set their tea-table that afternoon:  we could watch the rooks cawing and circling about the elms.  Sometimes Mr. Hamilton would pass with Nap at his heels and look up at us with a smile.  Once a great bunch of roses all wet with dew came flying through the open window and fell on Gladys’s muslin gown.  ’Did Giles throw them?  Will you thank him, Ursula?’ she said, raising them in her thin fingers.  ’How cool and delicious they are?’ But when I looked out Mr. Hamilton was not to be seen.

Lady Betty wrote very piteous letters begging to be recalled, which Mr. Hamilton answered very kindly but firmly.  He told her that Gladys required perfect quiet, that if she came home she would not be allowed to be with her; and when Lady Betty heard that I was nursing her she grew a little more content.

Gladys was always more restless and suffering towards evening; ’her bad thoughts,’ as she called them, came out like bats in the darkness.  I tried the experiment of singing to her one evening, and I found, to my delight, that my voice had a soothing influence:  after this I always sang to her after she was in bed:  I used to take up my station by the window and sing softly one song after another, until she was quiet and drowsy.

As I sang I always saw a dark shadow, moving slowly under the oak-trees, pacing slowly up and down; sometimes it approached the house and stood motionless under the window, but I never took any notice.

‘Thank you, dear Ursula,’ Gladys would say when I at last ceased; ’I feel more comfortable now.’  And after a time I would hear her regular breathing and know she was asleep.  I shall never forget the relief with which I watched her first natural sleep:  she had had a restless night, as usual, but towards morning she had fallen into a quiet, refreshing sleep, which had lasted for three hours.

I had finished my breakfast when I heard her stirring, and hurried in to her; to my delight, she spoke to me quite naturally, without a trace of nervousness: