At last, horror of her own intensely alert faculties, blinded by darkness, made her turn up the light.  Instantly the sight of the familiar room seemed unbearable, and she turned it down again.  But again the darkness was quite intolerable, and seemed to have a hideous life of its own which held in it presences of evil.  At one moment she breathed in the air of the winter’s night, shivering with cold; at the next she was stifled for want of breath.  So the light by the bed was turned on again, and to get a little further from it Molly got up and slowly and carefully put on her stockings and fur slippers, then opened a cupboard and took out a magnificent fur cloak and wrapped herself in it.  Then suddenly one aspect of the position became concrete to her imagination.  She knew that the cloak was bought with ill-gotten money.  Her enormous allowance after she came of age, even the expenses of her education—­Miss Carew’s salary among other things—­had been won by fraud.  And now, oh! why, why had not her miserable mother spoken the truth when she got the will, or why had she not destroyed it?  Why had she left it to Molly to put right all this long, long imposture, and to reveal to the world the story of her mother’s crime?  It seemed to Molly as if she were looking on at some other girl’s life, and as if she were considering it from an external point of view.  The sleeping-draught had, no doubt, excited still further the terrible agitation of her nerves, and ideas came to her as if they had no connection with her own personality.

Wicked old woman, dying in Florence!  How cruel those words were:  “Let it be her own affair”!  Her last act to send those papers to the poor girl she had deserted as a baby, and refused even to see as a woman.  “Let it be her own affair.”  Her own affair to choose actual poverty and a terrible publicity as to the past instead of a great fortune and silence as to her mother’s guilt.  “Let it be her own affair” to enrich her enemies, to give a fortune to the woman who would scorn her!  Would the man who had pretended to be her friend, and who had been pursuing her mother with detectives all the time, would he some day talk pityingly of her with his wife, and say she “had really behaved very well, poor thing”?

Suddenly Molly stopped, full of horror at a new thought.  Oh! she must make things safe and sure, or—­good God!—­what might not her mother’s daughter be tempted to do?  A deep blush spread over her face and neck.  She moved hastily to the door, and in a moment she was in Miss Carew’s room.

“I want to speak to you; I want to tell you something,” said Molly, turning up the electric light as she spoke.

Miss Carew was startled out of a sweet sleep, and her first thought was the one which haunted her whenever she was awakened at an untimely hour.  Her carefully-curled fringe was lying in the dressing-table drawer, and Molly had never seen her without it!

“Yes, yes; in one moment,” she answered fussily.  “I will come to your room in one minute.”