eemed kinder. It was as if I had been on the rack, and he
turned the screws back, and I was ready to do anything--anything--if
I might be taken off. Oh, Betty! you know, don't you, that--that if he
would only have been a little kind--just a little--I would have obeyed
him always, and given him everything."

Betty sat and looked at her, with deeply pondering eyes. She was
confronting the fact that it seemed possible that one must build a new
soul for her as well as a new body. In these days of science and growing
sanity of thought, one did not stand helpless before the problem of
physical rebuilding, and--and perhaps, if one could pour life into a
creature, the soul of it would respond, and wake again, and grow.

"You do not know where he is?" she said aloud. "You absolutely do not
know?"

"I never know exactly," Lady Anstruthers answered. "He was here for a
few days the week before you came. He said he was going abroad. He might
appear to-morrow, I might not hear of him for six months. I can't help
hoping now that it will be the six months."

"Why particularly now?" inquired Betty.

Lady Anstruthers flushed and looked shy and awkward.

"Because of--you. I don't know what he would say. I don't know what he
would do."

"To me?" said Betty.

"It would be sure to be something unreasonable and wicked," said Lady
Anstruthers. "It would, Betty."

"I wonder what it would be?" Betty said musingly.

"He has told lies for years to keep you all from me. If he came now, he
would know that he had been found out. He would say that I had told you
things. He would be furious because you have seen what there is to see.
He would know that you could not help but realise that the money he made
me ask for had not been spent on the estate. He,--Betty, he would try to
force you to go away."

"I wonder what he would do?" Betty said again musingly. She felt
interested, not afraid.

"It would be something cunning," Rosy protested. "It would be something
no one could expect. He might be so rude that you could not remain
in the room with him, or he might be quite polite, and pretend he was
rather glad to see you. If he was only frightfully rude we should be
safer, because that would not be an unexpected thing, but if he was
polite, it would be because he was arranging something hideous, which
you could not defend yourself against."

"Can you tell me," said Betty quite slowly, because, as she looked down
at the carpet, she was think