ome at the house in Grove Lane; the Miss. Barmbys called several
times without being admitted, though they felt sure that Nancy was at
home. Under these circumstances, it became desirable to discover some
intermediary who would keep them acquainted with the details of Nancy's
life and of her brother's. Such intermediary was at hand, in the person
of Miss. Jessica Morgan.

CHAPTER 2

Until of late there had existed a bare acquaintance between Jessica and
the Barmby family. The two or three hours which she perforce spent
in Samuel's company on Jubilee night caused Jessica no little
embarrassment; as a natural result, their meetings after that had a
colour of intimacy, and it was not long before Miss. Morgan and the
Miss. Barmbys began to see more of each other. Nancy, on a motive
correspondent with that which actuated her guardians, desired Jessica's
familiarity with the household in Dagmar Road; her friend could thus
learn and communicate sundry facts of importance, else hidden from her
in the retirement to which she was now condemned. How did the Barmbys
regard her behaviour to them? Did they, in their questioning, betray
any suspicion fraught with danger? Jessica, enjoying the possession of
a most important secret, which she had religiously guarded even from her
mother, made time to accept the Barmbys' invitations pretty frequently,
and invited the girls to her own home as often as she could afford a
little outlay on cakes and preserves.

It made a salutary distraction in her life. As December drew near, she
exhibited alarming symptoms of over-work, and but for the romance which
assured to her an occasional hour of idleness, she must have collapsed
before the date of her examination. As it was, she frightened one of her
pupils, at the end of a long lesson, by falling to the floor and lying
there for ten minutes in unconsciousness. The warning passed unheeded;
day and night she toiled at her insuperable tasks, at times half
frenzied by the strangest lapses of memory, and feeling, the more she
laboured, only the more convinced that at the last moment every fact she
had acquired would ruthlessly desert her.

Her place of abode favoured neither health nor mental tranquillity. It
was one of a row of new houses in a new quarter. A year or two ago the
site had been an enclosed meadow, portion of the land attached to what
was once a country mansion; London, devourer of rural limits, of a
sudden made hideous encroac