r betters, I can tell you,"
was all the reply she received. "Well be ye coming to your bed?"

So up the creaking stairs she was guided to a room, very unlike that
fresh white bower at Bowstead, large, eerie, ghostly-looking, bare
save for a dark oak chest, and a bed of the same material, the posts
apparently absolute trees, squared and richly carved, and supporting a
solid wooden canopy with an immense boss as big as a cabbage, and carved
something like one, depending from the centre, as if to endanger the
head of the unwary, who should start up in bed. No means of ablution
were provided, and Aurelia felt so grimed and dusty that she ventured to
beg for an ewer and basin; but her amiable hostess snarled out that she
had enough to do without humouring fiddle-faddle whimsies, and that she
might wash at the pump if nothing else would serve her.

Aurelia wished she had known this before going up stairs, and, worn out
as she was, the sense implanted by her mother that it was wicked to go
to sleep dirty, actually made her drag herself down to a grim little
scullery, where she was permitted to borrow a wooden bowl, since she
was too _nice_ forsooth to wash down stairs. She carried it up with a
considerable trouble more than half full, and a bit of yellow soap and
clean towel were likewise vouchsafed to her. The wash--perhaps because
of the infinite trouble it cost her--did her great good,--it gave her
energy to recollect her prayers and bring good angels about her. If this
had been her first plunge from home, when Jumbo's violin had so scared
her, such a place as this would have almost killed her; but the peace
that had come to her in Sedhurst Church lingered still round her, and
as she climbed up into the lofty bed the verse sang in her ears "Love is
strong as death." Whether Love Divine or human she did not ask herself,
but with the sense of soothing upon her, she slept--and slept as a
seventeen-years'-old frame will sleep after having been thirty-six hours
awake and afoot.

When she awoke it was with the sense of some one being in the room. "O
gemini!" she heard, and starting up, only just avoiding the knob, she
saw Mrs. Loveday's well-preserved brunette face gazing at her.

"Your servant, ma'am," she said. "You'll excuse me if I speak with you
here, for I must be back by the time my Lady's bell rings."

"Is it very late?" said Aurelia, taking from under her pillow her watch,
which had stopped long ago.

"Nigh upon te