ersons in this house, and
that I am to have a room of my own. I am grateful, whatever your motives
may be, for the arrangement that you have proposed. Direct one of these
two women to show me my room."

Geoffrey turned to Hester Dethridge.

"Take her up stairs," he said; "and let her pick which room she pleases.
Give her what she wants to eat or drink. Bring down the address of the
place where her luggage is. The lad here will go back by railway, and
fetch it. That's all. Be off."

Hester went out. Anne followed her up the stairs. In the passage on the
upper floor she stopped. The dull light flickered again for a moment
in her eyes. She wrote on her slate, and held it up to Anne, with these
words on it: "I knew you would come back. It's not over yet between
you and him." Anne made no reply. She went on writing, with something
faintly like a smile on her thin, colorless lips. "I know something of
bad husbands. Yours is as bad a one as ever stood in shoes. He'll try
you." Anne made an effort to stop her. "Don't you see how tired I am?"
she said, gently. Hester Dethridge dropped the slate--looked with a
steady and uncompassionate attention in Anne's face--nodded her head,
as much as to say, "I see it now"--and led the way into one of the empty
rooms.

It was the front bedroom, over the drawing-room. The first glance
round showed it to be scrupulously clean, and solidly and tastelessly
furnished. The hideous paper on the walls, the hideous carpet on the
floor, were both of the best quality. The great heavy mahogany bedstead,
with its curtains hanging from a hook in the ceiling, and with its
clumsily carved head and foot on the same level, offered to the view the
anomalous spectacle of French design overwhelmed by English execution.
The most noticeable thing in the room was the extraordinary attention
which had been given to the defense of the door. Besides the usual lock
and key, it possessed two solid bolts, fastening inside at the top and
the bottom. It had been one among the many eccentric sides of Reuben
Limbrick's character to live in perpetual dread of thieves breaking into
his cottage at night. All the outer doors and all the window shutters
were solidly sheathed with iron, and had alarm-bells attached to them
on a new principle. Every one of the bedrooms possessed its two bolts
on the inner side of the door. And, to crown all, on the roof of the
cottage was a little belfry, containing a bell large enough to make