up and listened," she said. "She's perfectly quiet. She must
be asleep."

Jeff rose.

"Come, father," he said. "You'll be drowsy as an owl to-morrow. We'd
better get up early, all of us."

"Yes," said Anne. She knew what he meant. They had, somehow, a
distasteful, puzzling piece of work cut out for them. They must be up to
cope with this strange Esther.

Lydia fell asleep almost, as the cosy saying goes, as soon as her head
touched the pillow. She was dead tired. But in what seemed to her the
middle of the night, she heard a little noise, and flew out of bed,
still dazed and blinking. She thought it was the click of a door. But
Esther's door was shut, the front door, too, for she crept into the hall
and peered over the railing. She went to the hall window and looked out
on the dark shrubbery above the snow, and the night was still and the
scene so kind it calmed her. But she could not see, beyond the
shrubbery, the black figure running softly down the walk. Lydia went
back to bed, and when the "midnight" hooted she drew the clothes closer
about her ears and thought how glad she was to be so comfortable. It was
not until the next morning that she knew the "midnight" had carried
Esther with it.

XL

It was strangely neutral, the hue of the moment when they discovered she
had gone. They had not called her in the morning, but Anne had listened
many times at the door, and Lydia had prepared a choice tray for her,
and Mary Nellen tried to keep the coals at the right ardour for
toasting. Jeff had stayed in the house, walking uneasily about, and at a
little after ten he came out of his chair as if he suddenly recognised
the folly of staying in it so apathetically.

"Go up," he said to Lydia. "Knock. Then try the door."

Lydia got no answer to her knock, and the door yielded to her. There was
the bed untouched, on the hearth the cold ashes of last night's fire.
She stood stupidly looking until Jeff, listening at the foot of the
stairs, called to her and then himself ran up. He read the chill order
of the room and his eyes came back to Lydia's face.

"Oh," said Lydia, "will he be good to her?"

"Yes," said Jeff, "he'll be good enough. That isn't it. What a fool I
am! I ought to have watched her. But Esther wasn't daring. She never did
anything by herself. I couldn't get to New York now--" He paused to
calculate.

He ran downstairs, and without speaking to his father, on an irrational
impulse, over to Madam