d to say what worse
consequences might not happen after that.

Half an hour later we were away on our journey. My mistress stayed
in London two months. Throughout all that long time no letter from my
master was forwarded to her from the country house.

CHAPTER II.

WHEN the two months had passed we returned to Darrock Hall. Nobody there
had received any news in our absence of the whereabouts of my master and
his yacht.

Six more weary weeks elapsed, and in that time but one event happened
at the Hall to vary the dismal monotony of the lives we now led in
the solitary place. One morning Josephine came down after dressing my
mistress with her face downright livid to look at, except on one check,
where there was a mark as red as burning fire. I was in the kitchen at
the time, and I asked what was the matter.

"The matter!" says she, in her shrill voice and her half-foreign
English. "Use your own eyes, if you please, and look at this cheek of
mine. What! have you lived so long a time with your mistress, and don't
you know the mark of her hand yet?"

I was at a loss to understand what she meant, but she soon explained
herself. My mistress, whose temper had been sadly altered for the worse
by the trials and humiliations she had gone through, had got up that
morning more out of humor than usual, and, in answer to her maid's
inquiry as to how she had passed the night, had begun talking about
her weary, miserable life in an unusually fretful and desperate
way. Josephine, in trying to cheer her spirits, had ventured, most
improperly, on making a light, jesting reference to Mr. Meeke, which had
so enraged my mistress that she turned round sharp on the half-breed and
gave her--to use the common phrase--a smart box on the ear. Josephine
confessed that, the moment after she had done this, her better sense
appeared to tell her that she had taken a most improper way of resenting
undue familiarity. She had immediately expressed her regret for having
forgotten herself, and had proved the sincerity of it by a gift of half
a dozen cambric handkerchiefs, presented as a peace-offering on the
spot. After that I thought it impossible that Josephine could bear any
malice against a mistress whom she had served ever since she had been
a girl, and I said as much to her when she had done telling me what had
happened upstairs.

"I! Malice!" cries Miss Josephine, in her hard, sharp, snappish way.
"And why, and wherefore, if you please? I