At length Sophia, a faint meditative smile being all that was left of the storm in her, ascended slowly to the showroom, through the shop.  Nothing there of interest!  Thence she wandered towards the drawing-room, and encountered Mr. Critchlow’s tray on the mat.  She picked it up and carried it by way of the showroom and shop down to the kitchen, where she dreamily munched two pieces of toast that had cooled to the consistency of leather.  She mounted the stone steps and listened at the door of the parlour.  No sound!  This seclusion of Mr. Povey and Constance was really very strange.  She roved right round the house, and descended creepingly by the twisted house-stairs, and listened intently at the other door of the parlour.  She now detected a faint regular snore.  Mr. Povey, a prey to laudanum and mussels, was sleeping while Constance worked at her fire-screen!  It was now in the highest degree odd, this seclusion of Mr. Povey and Constance; unlike anything in Sophia’s experience!  She wanted to go into the parlour, but she could not bring herself to do so.  She crept away again, forlorn and puzzled, and next discovered herself in the bedroom which she shared with Constance at the top of the house; she lay down in the dusk on the bed and began to read “The Days of Bruce;” but she read only with her eyes.

Later, she heard movements on the house-stairs, and the familiar whining creak of the door at the foot thereof.  She skipped lightly to the door of the bedroom.

“Good-night, Mr. Povey.  I hope you’ll be able to sleep.”

Constance’s voice!

“It will probably come on again.”

Mr. Povey’s voice, pessimistic!

Then the shutting of doors.  It was almost dark.  She went back to the bed, expecting a visit from Constance.  But a clock struck eight, and all the various phenomena connected with the departure of Mr. Critchlow occurred one after another.  At the same time Maggie came home from the land of romance.  Then long silences!  Constance was now immured with her father, it being her “turn” to nurse; Maggie was washing up in her cave, and Mr. Povey was lost to sight in his bedroom.  Then Sophia heard her mother’s lively, commanding knock on the King Street door.  Dusk had definitely yielded to black night in the bedroom.  Sophia dozed and dreamed.  When she awoke, her ear caught the sound of knocking.  She jumped up, tiptoed to the landing, and looked over the balustrade, whence she had a view of all the first-floor corridor.  The gas had been lighted; through the round aperture at the top of the porcelain globe she could see the wavering flame.  It was her mother, still bonneted, who was knocking at the door of Mr. Povey’s room.  Constance stood in the doorway of her parents’ room.  Mrs. Baines knocked twice with an interval, and then said to Constance, in a resonant whisper that vibrated up the corridor—–­

“He seems to be fast asleep.  I’d better not disturb him.”