ns, he gradually made out the details of the staircase.

"You'd better go and see," the whispering voice commanded.

He dropped the hand and obeyed, creeping up the left wing of the
staircase. As he faced about at the half-landing, he saw Helen, in an
orange-tinted peignoir, and her hair all down her back, holding a
candle. She beckoned to him. He ascended to her.

"Who's there?" she inquired, coldly.

"Mrs. Prockter," he murmured.

"And are you sitting together in the dark?" she inquired, coldly.

The story that the candle had expired seemed feeble in the extreme. And
for him the word "cap" was written in letters of fire on the darkness
below.

He made no attempt to answer her question.

CHAPTER XXIV

SEEING A LADY HOME

Those words of Helen's began a fresh chapter in the life of her
great-stepuncle, James Ollerenshaw. They set up in him a feeling, or
rather a whole range of feelings, which he had never before experienced.
At tea, Helen had hinted at the direction of Mrs. Prockter's cap. That
was nothing. He could not be held responsible for the direction of Mrs.
Prockter's cap. He could laugh at that, even though he faintly blushed.
But to be caught sitting in the dark with Mrs. Prockter, after ten
o'clock at night, in his own house; to have the fact pointed out to him
in such a peculiar, meaningful tone as Helen employed--here was
something that connected him and Mrs. Prockter in a manner just a shade
too serious for mere smiling. Here was something that had not before
happened to him in his career as rent-collector and sage.

Not that he minded! No, he did not mind. Although he had no intention
whatever of disputing the possession of Mrs. Prockter with her stepson,
he did not object to all the implication in Helen's remarkable tone. On
the contrary, he was rather pleased. Why should not he sit with a lady
in the dark? Was he not as capable as any man of sitting with a lady in
the dark? He was even willing that Helen should credit him, or pretend
to credit him, with having prearranged the dark.

Ah! People might say what they chose! But what a dog he might have been
had he cared to be a dog! Here he was, without the slightest preliminary
practice, successfully sitting with a lady in the dark, at the first
attempt! And what lady? Not the first-comer! Not Mrs. Butt! Not the
Mayoress! But the acknowledged Queen of Bursley, the undisputed leader
of all that was most distinguished in Bursley society!