sia stayed for half an hour after he had gone, thinking of the
hard and clean-cut face that she had seen for an instant in the
flickering gaslight.

It was a hard face, and as she sat in the dark with closed eyes, and saw
that face again and again in her mind, she knew that it was hard. It
was hard--it was almost cruel. No, it was not cruel, but only
recklessly resolved, with a resolution that would not swerve from
cruelty, if cruelty were needed to accomplish its purpose. Thus she
reasoned in the approved manner of fiction. She knew that such
reasonings were demanded of heroines. A heroine must be sadly unworthy
of her lofty role if she could not with a glance unmask even the most
enigmatic countenance, and trace the passions writ in it, clearly as a
page of "Reading without Tears." And was she, Anastasia, to fall short
in such a simple craft? No, she had measured the man's face in a
moment; it was resolved, even to cruelty. It was hard, but ah! how
handsome! and she remembered how the grey eyes had met hers and blinded
them with power, when she first saw him on the doorstep. Wondrous
musings, wondrous thought-reading, by a countrified young lady in her
teens; but is it not out of the mouths of babes and sucklings that
strength has been eternally ordained?

She was awakened from her reverie by the door being flung open, and she
leapt from her perch as Mr Sharnall entered the room.

"Heyday! heyday!" he said, "what have we here? Fire out, and window
open; missy dreaming of Sir Arthur Bedevere, and catching a cold--a very
poetic cold in the head."

His words jarred on her mood like the sharpening of a slate-pencil. She
said nothing, but brushed by him, shut the door behind her, and left him
muttering in the dark.

The excitement of Lord Blandamer's visit had overtaxed Miss Joliffe.
She took the gentlemen their supper--and Mr Westray was supping in Mr
Sharnall's room that evening--and assured Anastasia that she was not in
the least tired. But ere long she was forced to give up this pretence,
and to take refuge in a certain high-backed chair with ears, which stood
in a corner of the kitchen, and was only brought into use in illness or
other emergency. The bell rang for supper to be taken away, but Miss
Joliffe was fast asleep, and did not hear it. Anastasia was not allowed
to "wait" under ordinary circumstances, but her aunt must not be
disturbed when she was so tired, and she took the tray herself and w