‘If Mr. Manston comes to-night,’ she said, sitting on the bed as she had come in, and addressing the woman, ‘tell him I cannot see him.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

The woman left the room, and Mrs. Manston locked the door.  Before the servant had gone down more than two or three stairs, Mrs. Manston unfastened the door again, and held it ajar.

‘Bring me some brandy,’ she said.

The chambermaid went down to the bar and brought up the spirit in a tumbler.  When she came into the room, Mrs. Manston had not removed a single article of apparel, and was walking up and down, as if still quite undecided upon the course it was best to adopt.

Outside the door, when it was closed upon her, the maid paused to listen for an instant.  She heard Mrs. Manston talking to herself.

‘This is welcome home!’ she said.

2.  FROM TEN TO HALF-PAST ELEVEN P.M.

A strange concurrence of phenomena now confronts us.

During the autumn in which the past scenes were enacted, Mr. Springrove had ploughed, harrowed, and cleaned a narrow and shaded piece of ground, lying at the back of his house, which for many years had been looked upon as irreclaimable waste.

The couch-grass extracted from the soil had been left to wither in the sun; afterwards it was raked together, lighted in the customary way, and now lay smouldering in a large heap in the middle of the plot.

It had been kindled three days previous to Mrs. Manston’s arrival, and one or two villagers, of a more cautious and less sanguine temperament than Springrove, had suggested that the fire was almost too near the back of the house for its continuance to be unattended with risk; for though no danger could be apprehended whilst the air remained moderately still, a brisk breeze blowing towards the house might possibly carry a spark across.

‘Ay, that’s true enough,’ said Springrove.  ’I must look round before going to bed and see that everything’s safe; but to tell the truth I am anxious to get the rubbish burnt up before the rain comes to wash it into ground again.  As to carrying the couch into the back field to burn, and bringing it back again, why, ’tis more than the ashes would be worth.’

‘Well, that’s very true,’ said the neighbours, and passed on.

Two or three times during the first evening after the heap was lit, he went to the back door to take a survey.  Before bolting and barring up for the night, he made a final and more careful examination.  The slowly-smoking pile showed not the slightest signs of activity.  Springrove’s perfectly sound conclusion was, that as long as the heap was not stirred, and the wind continued in the quarter it blew from then, the couch would not flame, and that there could be no shadow of danger to anything, even a combustible substance, though it were no more than a yard off.

The next morning the burning couch was discovered in precisely the same state as when he had gone to bed the preceding night.  The heap smoked in the same manner the whole of that day:  at bed-time the farmer looked towards it, but less carefully than on the first night.