look at you. Go into your
corner this minute." And the wretched creature, whining and maudlin,
would shuffle into his corner in disgrace, not daring to disobey her.

The odd little dolls' dressmaker was cheerful and merry with all her
trials and loved Lizzie Hexam very much. Wrayburn, the young lawyer,
used to come to see them, but she did not approve of him. She saw almost
before Lizzie did herself that the latter was falling in love with
Wrayburn, and the wise little creature feared that this would only bring
pain to Lizzie, because she was an uneducated girl and Wrayburn a
gentleman, who, when he married, would be expected to marry a lady far
above Lizzie's station. Lizzie knew this, too, but she could not help
loving Wrayburn, and as for the lawyer, he thought nothing of what the
outcome might be.

Meanwhile Lizzie's brother Charley, for whom she had worked so hard,
was doing well at school, but now that he was getting up in the world he
had turned out to be a selfish boy and was afraid that his sister might
draw him down.

One day he came to visit her, bringing with him the master of his
school. The master's name was Headstone. He was a gloomy, passionate,
revengeful man who dressed always in black and had no friends.
Unfortunately enough, the first time he saw Lizzie he fell in love with
her. It was unfortunate in more ways than one, for Lizzie disliked him
greatly, and he was, as it proved, a man who would stop at nothing--not
even at the worst of crimes--to attain an object.

When Lizzie's brother found Headstone wanted to marry her, in his
selfishness he saw only what a fine thing it would be for himself, and
when she refused, he said many harsh things and finally left her in
anger, telling her she was no longer a sister of his.

This was not the worst either, for she knew Headstone had been made
almost angry by her dislike, and she was in dreadful fear lest he do
harm to Eugene Wrayburn, whom he suspected she loved.

In her anxiety Lizzie left her lodging with the dolls' dressmaker, and
found employment in a paper-mill in a village on the river, some miles
from London, letting neither Wrayburn nor Headstone know where she had
gone.

The schoolmaster imagined that the lawyer (whom he now hated with a
deadly hatred) knew where she was, and in order to discover if he
visited her he began to dog the other's footsteps. At night, after
teaching all day in school, Headstone would lie in wait outside the
law