n the
frosty sky, and all heaven was strewn with stars. Over the steep roof at
the other side spread on the dark azure of the night this glorious blazonry
of the unfathomable Creator. To me a dreadful scroll--inexorable eyes--the
cloud of cruel witnesses looking down in freezing brightness on my prayers
and agonies.

I turned about and sat down, leaning my head upon my arms. Then suddenly I
sat up, as for the first time the picture of Uncle Silas's littered
room, and the travelling bags and black boxes plied on the floor by his
table--the desk, hat-case, umbrella, coats, rugs, and mufflers, all ready
for a journey--reached my brain and suggested thought. The _mise en
scene_ had remained in every detail fixed upon my retina; and how I
wondered--'When is he going--how soon? Is he going to carry me away and
place me in a madhouse?'

'Am I--am I mad?' I began to think. 'Is this all a dream, or is it real?'

I remembered how a thin polite gentleman, with a tall grizzled head and a
black velvet waistcoat, came into the carriage on our journey, and said a
few words to me; how Madame whispered him something, and he murmured 'Oh!'
very gently, with raised eyebrows, and a glance at me, and thenceforward
spoke no more to me, only to Madame, and at the next station carried his
hat and other travelling chattels into another carriage. Had she told him I
was mad?

These horrid bars! Madame always with me! The direful hints that dropt from
my uncle! My own terrific sensations!--All these evidences revolved in my
brain, and presented themselves in turn like writings on a wheel of fire.

There came a knock to the door--

Oh, Meg! Was it she? No; old Wyat whispered Madame something about her
room.

So Madame re-entered, with a little silver tray and flagon in her hands,
and a glass. Nothing came from Uncle Silas in ungentlemanlike fashion.

'Drink, Maud,' said Madame, raising the cover, and evidently enjoying the
fragrant steam.

I could not. I might have done so had I been able to swallow anything--for
I was too distracted to think of Meg's warning.

Madame suddenly recollected her mistake of that evening, and tried the
door; but it was duly locked. She took the key from her pocket and placed
it in her breast.

'You weel 'av these rooms to yourself, ma chere. I shall sleep downstairs
to-night.'

She poured out some of the hot claret into the glass abstractedly, and
drank it off.

''Tis very good--I drank without theenk.