s now sitting on the side of the bed, looking wistfully across the
room. When I did not see Meg Hawkes, I beheld Madame darkly eyeing first
one then another point of the chamber, evidently puzzling over some
problem, and in one of her most savage moods--sometimes muttering to
herself, sometimes protruding, and sometimes screwing up her great mouth.

She went into her own room, where she remained, I think, nearly ten
minutes, and on her return there was that in the flash of her eyes, the
glow of her face, and the peculiar fragrance that surrounded her, that
showed she had been partaking of her favourite restorative.

I had not moved since she left my room.

She paused about the middle of the floor, and looked at me with what I can
only describe as her wild-beast stare.

'You are a very secrete family, you Ruthyns--you are so coning. I hate the
coning people. By my faith, I weel see Mr. Silas Ruthyn, and ask wat he
mean. I heard him tell old Wyat that Mr. Dudley is gone away to-night. He
shall tell me everything, or else I weel make echec et mat aussi vrai que
je vis.'

Madame's words had hardly ceased, when I was again watching Meg Hawkes on
the steep road, mounting, but never reaching, the top of the acclivity, on
the way to Elverston, and mentally praying that she might be brought
safely there. Vain prayer of an agonised heart! Meg's journey was already
frustrated: she was not to reach Elverston in time.

Madame revisited her apartment, and returned, not, I think, improved in
temper. She walked about the room, hustling the scanty furniture hither and
thither as she encountered it. She kicked her empty box out of her way,
with a horrid crash, and a curse in French. She strode and swaggered round
the room, muttering all the way, and turning the corners of her course with
a furious whisk. At last, out of the door she went. I think she fancied she
had not been sufficiently taken into confidence as to what was intended for
me.

It was now growing late, and yet no succour! I was seized, I remember, with
a dreadful icy shivering.

I was listening for signals of deliverance. At ever distant sound, half
stifled with a palpitation, these sounds piercing my ear with a horrible
and exaggerated distinctness--'Oh Meg!--Oh cousin Monica!--Oh come! Oh
Heaven, have mercy!--Lord, have mercy!' I thought I heard a roaring and
jangle of voices. Perhaps it came from Uncle Silas's room. It might be the
tipsy violence of Madame. It mi