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But she had no sooner placed dress and sash side by side upon the bed and had begun to wonder what stockings to select, when there came a faint, hesitating knock at the door.

It turned out to be Lily; and Lily with tears running down her cheeks.

“What is it? What's the matter?” she cried. “Come in, Lily! Come in and tell me what it is.”

She pulled the girl in and closed the door. “There! There!” she murmured soothingly. "Don't you cry! You'll spoil your nice, clean apron. Look! Here's a new handkerchief; and I'll give it to you, Lily, to keep. It's real Norwich linen.'9

“Louie was ... I thought . . . Mr. Weatherwax said . . .”

“Now stop, Lily! There's a good girl. Stop and tell me about it quietly.”

“ 'Twas to do with . . . 'twas because of . . . 'twere about Mr. Barter, Miss Mary.”

Mary was a kind-hearted, generous girl and not devoid of her own queer slant of Norfolk humour; but her attitude to Lily did unconsciously change a little at the introduction of Mr. Barter's name.

“Well, Lily, what was it?”

"Thank you . . . ever ... so much . . . Miss . . . for this love . . . lovely handkerchief! I shall keep it as ... as a keepsake, Miss/'

“But what is it, Lily? What's upset you so?”

“Mr. Weatherwax said he'd tell Mistress that he'd seen Mr. Barter talking to me in Ruins a week agone come Sunday. He've a bad tongue, that old man has; and Louie thought if I told you, Miss, what tales he's going about telling of me. maybe Mistress would ... I mean maybe Mistress wouldn't------”

“But did Mr. Barter talk to you last Sunday, Lily?”

“Not talk—of course, Miss Mary”—and Lily, folding up the handkerchief into little squares, uplifted a face as innocent of all guile as a wrongfully accused heroine in a story by the author of The Channings—“not talk, of course, Miss—Mr. Barter happened to pass by when I was reading under the wall at Ruins' End and naturally, being the gentleman he is------”

Mary found her good-temper coming back to her with a rush. The image of the sedate Lily with her book, the expression, “Ruins' End,” the casual Barter taking a blameless stroll in the Abbey grounds—in the presence of these things it was impossible to nourish grievances. Besides, Lily could take care of herself. Lily was no little goose like Tossie Stickles.

“Tom, Tom,” she thought, “you'd better take care. If I know anything of our Lily you'll meet your match if you don't look out!”

“I understand, Lily. . . . It's all right. Miss Drew knows how careful you always are of the credit of her house. If I were you I would only laugh when old Weatherwax teases you. Answer him back! Pay him off in his own coin. Above all, don't make him angry.”

Mary paused for a moment, and then, while she moved to her chest of drawers to finish her dressing, the thought of Crummie and the white geraniums made her burst out scandalously to Lily who was fumbling with the red sash on the bed: “We girls can only be young once, Lily,” she surprised herself by saying. “But we must keep our wits about us, for men are ticklish creatures.”

It may be believed how wide Lily's eyes opened when she heard these words. “Mr. Barter has always behaved very proper, Miss,” she stammered, “and I'm sure, Miss, you know that I------”

“That's enough, now, Lily,” said Mary firmly, pushing the astonished maid gently towards the door. “Go and see if Miss Drew wants any help; and if she's gone down, tell her I won't be a minute. By the way, Lily, it may interest you to know that I was married the day before yesterday!”

Lily's face expressed unalloyed dramatic interest; but, a second later, bewildered consternation.

“She thinks it's to Tom,” passed through Mary's mind. “Yes,” she went on, t£to my cousin, Mr. John Crow, who did so much in the Pageant."

Lily sighed a deep sigh of relief. “Are you going to ... to leave us . . . Miss ... I mean Mam?”

“We'll see what your mistress says about that” replied Mrs. John Crow with a brazen chuckle. “I've got two homes now, Lily—one here and one—not here. Now run off, please, there's a good girl! Oh, and you can tell Louie to send in some of those tartlets she made yesterday. I know there's rice pudding; but if she wants to give me a treat------”

“May I tell------” murmured Lily from the doorway.

“Of course, of course! Only say it's a great secret—especially from Mr. Weatherwax!”

It was only eight by the French clock on the mantelpiece when dinner was over and Miss Drew and her rebellious companion were seated opposite each other, with the Dresden coffee-cups between them. Not a sip of her coffee, however, had Miss Drew taken. Her face was tense and white, her nostrils twitching, her fingers fretting with her white shawl, her shoes tapping the ground, her back straight.

“—like an elopement; that's what it is . . . stealing off at night to a man's room . . .no! it's worse than that . . . it's like an assignation!”

“It's my husband's room,” maintained the girl firmly; and she said to herself: “I believe she's going to let me go.”

Miss Drew visibly shuddered.

“Mary!” she said.

“Yes, dear?”

“Go to the dining-room sideboard, please, and get me half a wine glass of Mr. Dekker's brandy!”

The girl made haste to obey her and was glad to find that the room was already nearly dark and that Lily had taken away both rice pudding and tartlets.

Miss Drew drank the brandy in two quick gulps.

“Is he coming for you tonight?”

The girl nodded.

'“I won't have him cross my threshold! I've told you that already.”

''He's not coming in. I'm to meet him at the gate/'

The woman rose from her seat and, moving to the chimney-piece, drew her shawl tight round her shoulders.

There were no flower-pots in the grate tonight. Its cold polished black cavity looked back at her like the ribs of death.

“This moment had to come,” she said in a low voice, speaking more to herself than to the girl. “It had to come; and now it's come.”

“But I'll be over every day, dear,” whispered Mary, wishing bitterly that she had never let John come for her tonight- '“It's worse than I expected,” she thought.

“You don't know,” said Miss Drew, “you simply don't know what you're to me.”

“Dear . . . my dear!” murmured Mary, rising, she also, from her seat, and making a little wavering, fluctuating movement towards her friend.

But Miss Drew continued: “No, you don't know, you never have known! This man . . . this 'husband' as you call him, this cunning scamp . . . has less feeling in his -whole body than I've got in my little finger!”

She must have caught, just then, an involuntary glance of Mary's towards the door. The younger woman was indeed afraid that Lily might suddenly appear to carry off the coffee.

But to Mary's amazement Miss Drew now rushed to the door and locked it! Such a thing as locking the drawing-room door of the Abbey House to prevent interruption from the servants was as much of a tragic and-historic event—if the real proportion of things be considered—as the eviction of the royal spy, before Sedgemoor, from the bar-room of Dickery Cantle's great-great-great-grandfather.

When Miss Drew came back from crossing the room the two women confronted each other between the fragile coffee-table and the fireless grate. The elder wore her usual black silk garment with the heavy brooch securing the old lace frill on her withered neck. Opposed to her gaunt figure,' Mary's form, in her low-cut white dress and big crimson sash, looked very young and soft and girlish.

“I'd like you . . . I'd like you not to . . .”

Miss Drew was evidently struggling to say something that tore at her vitals.

“I'd like------” she gasped again.

“What is it, oh, what is it?” stammered Mary, awed, a little scared and completely bewildered.

“I'd like you not to go to him tonight. I'd like you to stay with me tonight . . . our last night ... as you are!”

“Of course, my dear, if you feel it like that------”

"I mean . . . not leave me at all . . . just this once ... I mean ... let me hold you ... all night . . . close to me------

Mary's face must have expressed such trouble, such pity, such confused agitation, that the old woman changed her tone to a quieter one. “It would be nothing to you ... to watch ... to be there ... to be near me ... just this once . . . and then” —she swallowed a rasping, dry sob—“tomorrow . . . you shall go.”

“Dear! I must think. He'll be at the gate in a few minutes; I must—I don't know what to say. For him to go back alone— through the streets—to that room—oh, I don't know what to do!”

She flung herself down on a chair, her red sash trailing to the carpet, lying on the carpet, like a great stream of blood from a stab in her side.

Miss Drew leaned one of her long, tight-sleeved arms upon the mantelpiece and watched her.

The void of her longing for her, of her losing her, throbbed within her like a hollow cave, round the walls of which a bitter stifling smoke was whirling, seeking an exit.

The French clock on the mantelpiece ticked on remorselessly: tick-tock, tochtich, iick-tock, as if there were behind its hidden wheels, some demon of the inanimate, that was taking vengeance for all the hammerings and tinkerings it had had at the hands of its man-creators.

Mary glanced hopelessly, helplessly, at the clock. She remembered how it had ticked, just like this, the night she had felt so sad with Tom before the Pageant. Her thoughts kept taking first one road of trouble and then another. “It isn't fair!”“ her heart cried. ”I belong to John. It isn't fair!“ And then a vast pity for this unloved, childless old woman surged up within her. ”After all/' she said to herself, “it's only for one short night; and how could I be happy, over there, thinking that I'd denied her such a little thing?”

“Let me think/5 she whispered, giving Miss Drew a faint smile and a reassuring nod. ”Sit down, dear—don't stand like that! You make me nervous. I only want to think . . . just to think ... a little more."

But Miss Drew did not show any inclination to sit down. She kept her eyes fixed upon the girl in the chair, as if that red sash were a death warrant. And something from her Isle-of-Ely ancestors now rose up in Mary's nature; something sturdy, earth-rooted and with a smack of indulgent humour in it, like the taste of peat-smoke.

“The poor heart!” she said to herself. “John and I can surely wait for twenty-four hours. If / can—God knows!—he can.”

To her consternation Miss Drew now rushed forward and with a heart-rending groan flung herself on her knees at the girl's feet. “I'm not a bad woman! I'm not a bad woman!” she sobbed out; and then to Mary's dismay she began pressing the red sash against her lips. “I'm not . . . I'm not a bad woman!” she groaned again, uplifting to the girl a face contorted with shame and passion.

“Miss Drew! dear Miss Drew! Get up, for Christ's sake. It's not right for you—it's not right for either of us! Oh, what shall I do? What shall I------”

But the other had buried her face in the girl's lap and with her arms outstretched was clutching at the sash where it was wound about the young woman's waist. She was murmuring all sorts of wild things now to which the girl could only helplessly listen, looking distractedly at the clock, which went on with its infernal ticking in exactly the same tone as if its mistress had been pouring out tea for Matthew Dekker.

“Oh, I love you so! Oh, I would give up my life for you! I can't bear it any more—it's lasted too long. But you will? My child, my little one, my only one, you will? You will be with me, watch with me, let me hold you, just this one single night? I'm not a bad woman! Say I'm not, child! It's . . . it's . . . it's this Love that's burning my life up!”

The clock selected this particular moment to begin striking nine, the hour when John was to be at the gate! She had done nothing towards putting her day-dress and her night-dress into that black bag she had told him about The intrusion of Lily at that juncture had left her barely time to get dressed at all.

She had to struggle now with a definite anger against this frantic creature; but her sturdy East-Anglian nature stood her in good stead and she fought that feeling down. She saw in her mind's eye the drooping forehead, the lowered eyelids of the nun-like Crummie. She saw Sam Dekker's white geraniums; and she murmured to herself again: “The poor heart! The poor heart!”

“Get up, dear! Get up!” she now cried aloud in a voice not untender but resolute and emphatic. As she spoke, she herself struggled out of the chair. Standing erect now she felt in more control of the situation; and she took hold of Miss Drew's hands and managed to drag her up from her knees. She was startled as she did this by the burning feverishness in the woman's fingers. But when she got her safe on her feet the agitated lady fell into a fit of, violent shivering as if, in the fever of her emotion, she had been plunged into ice-cold water.

But she resumed her old place by the empty grate; though Mary could see the thin black arm that she extended along the mantelpiece was trembling so much that it made a couple of ornaments that stood there jingle and tinkle against each other.

Miss Drew glanced sideways now at the ticking dock, as if she could have struck out its life with one blow and left it pointing at ten minutes past nine in an eternal paralysis!

“Well,” she whispered huskily, “why don't you go up and pack your things, if . . . that man ... is waiting for you?”

Mary walked slowly to the window. She was once more in an anguish of indecision. The tragedy of passion often consists in the depths of harsh unlovableness into which it throws its victims. Miss Drew, by the tone in which she said, “Go up . . . that man is waiting,” had done her utmost to destroy the very pity upon which her fate depended. The "poor heart/' as her red-sashed companion h u' called her in her thoughts, was indeed in a tragic impasse.

uWell . . . have you decided against me . , . against the one 'hing I've ever begged ... on my knees ... of a living soul?"

Her words seemed to come, not from her own mouth, but from some other Miss Drew,—a towering image of devastated frustration—that hung and wavered in the air between them.