to walk home; and though she could never have spelt the strange uncouth word, yet she spoke it with pretty slow distinctness to the guard, asking him in her broken English when they should arrive there?  Not till four o’clock.  Alas! and what might happen before then!  Once with him she should have no fear; she was sure that she could bring him round; but what might not happen before he was in her tender care?  She was a very capable person in many ways, though so childish and innocent in others.  She made up her mind to the course she should pursue when the coach set her down at Feversham.  She asked for a man to carry her trunk, and show her the way to Hamley Hall.

‘Hamley Hall!’ said the innkeeper.  ’Eh! there’s a deal of trouble there just now.’

‘I know, I know,’ said she, hastening off after the wheelbarrow in which her trunk was going, and breathlessly struggling to keep up with it, her heavy child asleep in her arms.  Her pulses beat all over her body; she could hardly see out of her eyes.  To her, a foreigner, the drawn blinds of the house, when she came in sight of it, had no significance; she hurried, stumbled on.

‘Back door or front, missus?’ asked the boots from the inn.

‘The most nearest,’ said she.  And the front door was ’the most nearest.’  Molly was sitting with the squire in the darkened drawing-room, reading out her translations of Aimee’s letters to her husband.  The squire was never weary of hearing them; the very sound of Molly’s voice soothed and comforted him, it was so sweet and low.  And he pulled her up, much as a child does, if on a second reading of the same letter she substituted one word for another.  The house was very still this afternoon, still as it had been now for several days; every servant in it, however needless, moving about on tiptoe, speaking below the breath, and shutting doors as softly as might be The nearest noise or stir of active life was that of the rooks in the trees, who were beginning their spring chatter of business.  Suddenly, through this quiet, there came a ring at the front-door bell that sounded, and went on sounding, through the house, pulled by an ignorant vigorous hand.  Molly stopped reading; she and the squire looked at each other in surprised dismay.  Perhaps a thought of Roger’s sudden (and impossible) return was in the mind of each; but neither spoke.  They heard Robinson hurrying to answer the unwonted summons.  They listened; but they heard no more.  There was little more to hear.  When the old servant opened the door, a lady with a child in her arms stood there.  She gasped out her ready-prepared English sentence,—­

‘Can I see Mr. Osborne Hamley?  He is ill, I know; but I am his wife.’

Robinson had been aware that there was some mystery, long suspected by the servants, and come to light at last to the master,—­he had guessed that there was a young woman in the case; but when she stood there before him, asking for her dead husband as if he were living, any presence of mind Robinson might have had forsook him; he could not tell her the truth,—­he could only leave the door open, and say to her, ‘Wait awhile, I’ll come back,’ and betake himself to the drawing-room where Molly was, he knew.  He went up to her in a flutter and a hurry, and whispered something to her which turned her white with dismay.