This was done, and when Emily had been carried into the house, Paul was led thither also by his captor.  As they stood in the hall, the second officer drew from his pocket a warrant, and read it out with official gravity.

“You’ll go quietly with us, I suppose?” he then said.

Paul nodded, and all three departed by the front door.

It was midnight and before Mrs. Enderby showed any signs of returning consciousness.  Miss Bygrave and Maud sat by her bed together, and at length one of them noticed that she had opened her eyes and was looking about her, though without moving her head.

“Mother,” Maud asked, bending over her, “are you better?  Do you know me?”

Emily nodded.  There was no touch of natural colour in her face, and its muscles seemed paralysed.  And she lay thus for hours, conscious apparently, but paying no attention to those in the room.  Early in the morning a medical man was summoned, but his assistance made no change.  The fog was still heavy, and only towards noon was it possible to dispense with lamp-light; then there gleamed for an hour or two a weird mockery of day, and again it was nightfall.  With the darkness came rain.

Waymark had come to the house about ten o’clock.  But this was to be no wedding-day.  Maud begged him through her aunt not to see her, and he returned as he came.  Miss Bygrave had told him all that had happened.

Mrs. Enderby seemed to sleep for some hours, but just after nightfall the previous condition returned; she lay with her eyes open, and just nodded when spoken to.  From eight o’clock to midnight Maud tried to rest in her own room, but sleep was far from her, and when she returned to the sick-chamber to relieve her aunt, she was almost as worn and ghastly in countenance as the one they tended.  She took her place by the fire, and sat listening to the sad rain, which fell heavily upon the soaked garden-ground below.  It had a lulling effect.  Weariness overcame her, and before she could suspect the inclination, she had fallen asleep.

Suddenly she was awake again, wide awake, it seemed to her, without any interval of half-consciousness, and staring horror-struck at the scene before her.  The shaded lamp stood on the chest of drawers at one side of the room, and by its light she saw her mother in front of the looking-glass, her raised hand holding something that glistened.  She could not move a limb; her tongue was powerless to utter a sound.  There was a wild laugh, a quick motion of the raised hand—­then it seemed to Maud as if the room were filled with a crimson light, followed by the eternal darkness.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A fortnight later Miss Bygrave was sitting in the early morning by the bed where Maud lay ill.  For some days it had been feared that the girl’s reason would fail, and though this worst possibility seemed at length averted, her condition was still full of danger.  She had recognised her aunt the preceding evening, but a relapse had followed.  Now she unexpectedly turned to the watcher, and spoke feebly, but with perfect self-control.