Maud sat in thought till a loud ring at the door-bell made her start and flee upstairs.  The room in which she and Waymark sat when they were by themselves was in no danger of invasion, but she feared the possibility of meeting her mother to-night.  Her father was away from home, as usual, but the days of his return were always uncertain, and Mrs. Enderby might perchance open the door of the little sitting-room just to see whether he was there, as it was here he ordinarily employed himself when in the house.  From her bedroom Maud could hear several people ascend the stairs.  It was ten o’clock, but an influx of visitors at such an hour was nothing remarkable.  She could hear her mother’s laugh, and then the voice of a man, a voice she knew but too well—­that of Mr. Budge.

Her nerves were excited.  The night was close, and there were mutterings of thunder at times; the cloud whence they came seemed to her to spread its doleful blackness over this one roof.  An impulse seized her; she took paper and sat down at her desk to write.  It was a letter to Waymark, a letter such as she had never addressed to him, and which, even in writing it, she was conscious she could not send.  Her hand trembled as she filled the pages with burning words.  She panted for more than he had given her; this calm, half-brotherly love of his was just now like a single drop of water to one dying of thirst; she cried to him for a deeper draught of the joy of life.  The words came to her without need of thought; tears fell hot from her eyes and blotted what she wrote.

The tears brought her relief; she was able to throw her writing aside, and by degrees to resume that dull, vacant mood of habitual suffering which at all events could be endured.  From this, too, there was at times a retreat possible with the help of a book.  She had no mind to sleep, and on looking round, she remembered that the book she had been reading in the early part of the day was downstairs.  It was after midnight, and she seemed to have a recollection of hearing the visitors leave the house a little while ago; it would be safe to venture as far as the sitting-room below.

She began to descend the stairs quietly.  There was still a light in the hall, but the quietness of the house reassured her.  On turning an angle of the stairs, however, she saw that the door of the drawing-room was open, and that just within stood two figures—­her mother and Mr. Rudge.  They seemed to be whispering together, and in the same moment their lips met.  Then the man came out and went downstairs.  Mrs. Enderby turned back into the drawing-room.