excursion to Church Scarsdale have had
any purpose of the same sort? What was proposed? How was Madame interested
in it? Were such immeasurable treason and hypocrisy possible? I could not
explain nor quite believe in the shapeless suspicion that with these light
and bitter words of the old housekeeper had stolen so horribly into my
mind.

After Mrs. Rusk was gone I awoke from my dismal abstraction with something
like a moan and a shudder, with a dreadful sense of danger.

'Oh! Mary Quince,' I cried, 'do you think she really knew?'

'_Who_, Miss Maud?'

'Do you think Madame knew of those dreadful people? Oh, no--say you
don't--you don't believe it--tell me she did not. I'm distracted, Mary
Quince, I'm frightened out of my life.'

'There now, Miss Maud, dear--there now, don't take on so--why should
she?--no sich a thing. Mrs. Rusk, law bless you, she's no more meaning in
what she says than the child unborn.'

But I was really frightened. I was in a horrible state of uncertainty as to
Madame de la Rougierre's complicity with the party who had beset us at the
warren, and afterwards so murderously beat our poor gamekeeper. How was
I ever to get rid of that horrible woman? How long was she to enjoy her
continual opportunities of affrighting and injuring me?

'She hates me--she hates me, Mary Quince; and she will never stop until she
has done me some dreadful injury. Oh! will no one relieve me--will no one
take her away? Oh, papa, papa, papa! you will be sorry when it is too
late.'

I was crying and wringing my hands, and turning from side to side, at my
wits' ends, and honest Mary Quince in vain endevoured to quiet and comfort
me.

CHAPTER XVIII

_A MIDNIGHT VISITOR_

The frightful warnings of Lady Knollys haunted me too. Was there no escape
from the dreadful companion whom fate had assigned me? I made up my mind
again and again to speak to my father and urge her removal. In other things
he indulged me; here, however, he met me drily and sternly, and it was
plain that he fancied I was under my cousin Monica's influence, and also
that he had secret reasons for persisting in an opposite course. Just then
I had a gay, odd letter from Lady Knollys, from some country house in
Shropshire. Not a word about Captain Oakley. My eye skimmed its pages in
search of that charmed name. With a peevish feeling I tossed the sheet upon
the table. Inwardly I thought how ill-natured and unwomanly it was.

After a time, howe