g the
orders of her mistress.

"Strong," said Madeline, "I am going to let you wait upon Mrs. Arthur.
She is in delicate health, and needs a maid. You must be _very
attentive_, and don't let her get into any draughts. You can sleep in
the dressing-room; and if she is not _well cared for_, I shall hold
you accountable."

Cora looked at the big, robust woman, so appropriately called Strong,
and felt that she was indeed a prisoner.

Strong bowed in silent submission to the will of her late mistress,
and turned her broad visage upon her new one.

Madeline moved to leave the room, saying, with a return to her former
manner: "Good-night, step-mamma; try and go down to breakfast with me
in the morning, won't you?"

Without waiting for a reply, she opened the door and swept across the
hall, and Cora heard her door close behind her. Not deigning a single
glance at Strong, Cora sat tapping her foot upon the carpet and
reviewing the situation. After some angry musing, the practical side
of her nature began to assert itself. She reflected that she was not,
after all, in immediate danger; and that she would be still, to all
outward appearance, the mistress of Oakley. There was not much to fear
just now, and she would keep her eyes open.

Meantime, she would not be unnecessarily uncomfortable. And so, being
by nature indolent, she decided to make the most of the unwelcome
Strong. Turning toward the statue-like figure near the door, she
galvanized it into life by saying:

"Strong, get my dressing-gown from that closet, and then take off my
dress."

And Strong commenced her duties with cheerful alacrity.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

MYSTIFIED PEOPLE.

John Arthur sat before a smoldering fire, gazing moodily down at the
charred embers that had lost their glow and only showed a dark red
light here and there, as if to assure one that there was fire in the
grate.

He was thinner than of old. His face wore a sickly pallor. His hands
that clutched the arms of his invalid's chair worked incessantly,
indicating surely that his nerves were in anything but a state of
calm. He was feeble, too, in body; but his mind, spite of the verdict
of the Bellair physician and the drugs of the Professor, was still
unimpaired.

In the solitude of the two rooms, out of which he had not once
stepped since first he was removed to the west wing, he had had ample
time for reflection; but he had by no means arrived at a state of
mental beatitude.