ht, nodding
her head. "In a shop if necessary--or I could be a governess--and then
when he is free, Martin will be with me."

She climbed on a chair and turned down the hall-gas as she had seen
Martha do. She went to the door and slipped the chain into its socket
and turned the lock. She listened for a moment before she started
upstairs, she saw Mr. Crashaw's eyes in the dark--she heard his voice.

"Punishment! Punishment!..."

She suddenly started to run up the black stairs, stumbled, ran faster
through the passage under the picture of the armed men, arrived at last
in her room, breathless.

During her undressing she stopped sometimes to listen. Her aunt's
bedroom was on the floor below hers, and she certainly could hear
nothing through the closed doors, and yet she fancied, as she stood
there, that the sound of sobbing came up to her and, twice, a sharp cry.

"I suppose I'm terribly selfish," she thought, "I ought to want to go
and help Aunt Anne, and I don't." No, she didn't. She wanted to run
away from the house, miles and miles and miles. She climbed into bed
and thought of her escape. If Miss Trenchard did not answer her letter,
then she could go off to Uncle Mathew, greatly though she disliked the
thought of that; then she could live on her three hundred pounds and
look about until she found work or Martin came for her.

But so ignorant was she of the world that she did not in the least know
how she could get her three hundred pounds. But Uncle Mathew would
know. She thought of him standing in the doorway at the hotel, holding
up a glass, then she thought of Martin, and so fell asleep.

She woke suddenly to find some one standing in her open doorway and
holding up a candle. That some one was old Martha, looking strange
enough in a nightdress, her scanty grey hairs untidily about her neck
and a dirty red shawl over her shoulders. Maggie blinked at the light
and sat up in bed.

"What is it?" she asked.

"It's your aunt, Miss--Miss Anne. She's very bad. She wants you to go
to her."

Maggie got out of bed, put on her dressing-gown and slippers and
followed the servant.

As she hurried along the dark passage she was still only half-awake;
her soul had not returned into her body, but her body was awake and
vibrating with the knowledge that the soul was soon coming to it, and
coming to it with great news, with the consciousness of a marvellous
experience. For at the instant when Martha awoke her she had be