But as she continued to survey it, the clouds came trooping up once more, and the vision was wiped out and with it all memories save those of a nearer trouble—­a more pressing necessity.

Withdrawing from the window, she crept again to Reuther’s room and peered carefully in.  Innocence was asleep at last.  Not a movement disturbed the closed lids on the wax-like cheek.  Even the breath came so softly that it hardly lifted the youthful breast.  Repose the most perfect and in the form of all others the sweetest to a tender mother, lay before her and touched her already yearning heart to tears.  Lighting a candle and shielding it with her hand, she gazed long and earnestly at Reuther’s sweet face.  Yes, she was right.  Sorrow was slowly sapping the fountain of her darling’s youth.  If Reuther was to be saved, hope must come soon.  With a sob and a prayer, the mother left the room, and locking herself into her own, sat down at last to face the new perplexity, the monstrous enigma which had come into her life.

It had followed in natural sequence from a proposal made by the judge that some attention should be given his long-neglected rooms.  He had said on rising from the breakfast table—­(the words are more or less important): 

“I am really sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Scoville; but if you have time this morning, will you clean up my study before I leave?  The carriage is ordered for half-past nine.”

The task was one she had long desired to perform, and would have urged upon him daily had she dared, but the limitations he set for its accomplishment struck her aghast.

“Do you mean that you wish to remain there while I work?  You will be choked, Judge.”

“No more than I have been for the last two days.  You may enter any time.”  And going in, he left the door open behind him.

“He will lock it when he goes out,” she commented to herself.  “I had better hasten.”

Giving Reuther the rest of the work to do, she presently appeared before him with pail and broom and a pile of fresh linen.  Nothing more commonplace could be imagined, but to her, if not to him, there underlay this especial act of ordinary housewifery a possible enlightenment on a subject which had held the whole community in a state of curiosity for years.  She was going to enter the room which had been barred from public sight by poor Bela’s dying body.  She was going to see—­or had he only meant that she was to have her way with the library—­the room where she had already been and much of which she remembered.  The doubt gave a tremulous eagerness to her step and caused her eye to wander immediately to that forbidden corner soon as she had stepped over the threshold.

The bedroom door was open;—­proof that she was expected to enter there.  Meanwhile, she felt the eye of the judge upon her and endeavoured to preserve a perfect composure and to sink the curious and inquiring woman in the diligent housekeeper.