a? Let me tell tha, then,
that 'Debs,' 'Debban,' 'Debbrook,' and 'Des-borough' are all a seame!
Ay! thy feyther and thy feyther's feyther! Thou'lt be a Des-borough,
will tha? Dang tha! and look doon on tha kin, and dress thissen in silks
o' shame! Tell 'ee thou'rt an ass, gell! Don't tha hear? An ass! for all
tha bean John's bairn! An ass! that's what tha beast!"

With flashing eyes and burning cheeks she made one more supreme
effort, lifting her arms, freeing her wrists, and throwing the old man
staggering from her. Then she leaped the stile, turned, and fled through
the rain. But before she reached the end of the field she stopped! She
had freed herself--she was stronger than he--what had she to fear? He
was crazy! Yes, he MUST be crazy, and he had insulted her, but he was an
old man--and God knows what! Her heart was beating rapidly, her breath
was hurried, but she ran back to the stile.

He was not there. The field sloped away on either side of it. But she
could distinguish nothing in the pouring rain above the wind-swept
meadow. He must have gone home. Relieved for a moment she turned and
hurried on towards the Priory.

But at every step she was followed, not by the old man's presence, but
by what he had said to her, which she could not shake off as she had
shaken off his detaining fingers. Was it the ravings of insanity, or had
she stumbled unwittingly upon some secret--was it after all a SECRET?
Perhaps it was something they all knew, or would know later. And she had
come down here for this. For back of her indignation, back even of her
disbelief in his insanity, there was an awful sense of truth! The names
he had flung out, of "Debs," "Debban," and "Debbrook" now flashed upon
her as something she had seen before, but had not understood. Until she
satisfied herself of this, she felt she could not live or breathe! She
loathed the Priory, with its austere exclusiveness, as it rose before
her; she wished she had never entered it; but it contained that which
she must know, and know at once! She entered the nearest door and ran
up the grand staircase. Her flushed face and disordered appearance were
easily accounted for by her exposure to the sudden storm. She went to
her bedroom, sent her maid to another room to prepare a change of dress,
and sinking down before her traveling-desk, groped for a document. Ah!
there it was--the expensive toy that she had played with! She hastily
ran over its leaves to the page she alr