grew a little more restless and anxious as she
waited for news of Pattie's downfall. She had counted on going over to
Old Keston, ostensibly to see her sister and the new baby, but really
to pick up any gossip she could about Pattie; but though night after
night she made up her mind to go the next day, yet in the morning her
heart failed her. The chance of recognition was possible, and to take
Maud through the streets to the Nursery, in the glare of the morning
sunshine, seemed to be courting discovery. Nor did she dare to leave
the child at home alone, because of the neighbours. She would have
left Harry alone with the utmost indifference, and locked him in, and
he might have been frightened and screamed and cried all day, for all
she would have cared, and the neighbours could have made any remarks
they liked; but this was different.

She was certainly beginning to be nervous, and she took more beer than
she had ever taken before, because she felt so much more cheerful
for a little while, and when the inevitable depression it caused,
returned, why then she took some more!

As her neighbour had remarked, she hated children, and she became so
unutterably wearied of the care of these three all day and every day,
that she began to wish she had never troubled about paying Pattie out,
or chosen some way which had not entailed the plague of three children
upon herself.

Still, she had triumphed; she had had her vengeance. The thought was
very sweet, and the bother to herself would soon be over now. Indeed,
it must be, or Tom would be coming back.

One Saturday had already passed, since Maud came, and on the second
Saturday three things happened. News of Pattie came to her. Wrapped
round a haddock which she had purchased for dinner, was a crumpled
piece of newspaper. The name upon it, "Old Keston Gazette," caught her
eye instantly. She turned it over and glanced down its columns, and
her eyes rested on one, and a look and a smile of triumph flashed into
her face.

But as she read, her look changed, a deep and angry flush mounted to
her forehead and spread to her neck. In a sudden transport of rage,
she crumpled up the paper into a ball, cast it upon the floor and
trampled on it, and then stooping, she picked it up and thrust it into
the fire.

She had failed--she had been deceived--tricked--foiled. All her
efforts had been in vain! Pattie had escaped from her toils scot-free.
Pattie had never gone to the station at al