ly, pointing to the drawing-room. They
entered; it was dark.

'Your uncle made me drive up with him,' Arthur explained, as if in
apology.

She ignored the remark. 'You must go back to New York--at once,' she
told him, in a dry, curt voice.

'Yes,' he assented, 'I suppose I'd better.'

'And don't write to me--until after I have written.'

'Oh, but----' he began.

She thought wildly: 'This man, with his reason and his judgment, has not
the slightest notion how I feel, not the slightest!'

'I must write,' he said in a persuasive tone.

'No!' she cried passionately and vehemently. 'You aren't to write, and
you aren't to see me. You must promise, absolutely.'

'For how long?' he asked.

She shook her head. 'I don't know, I can't tell.'

'But isn't that rather----'

'Will you promise?' she cried once more, quite loudly and almost
fiercely. And her accents were so full of entreaty, of command, and of
despair, that Arthur feared a nervous crisis for her.

'If you wish it,' he said, forced to yield.

And even then she could not be content.

'You give me your word to do nothing at all until you hear from me?'

He paused, but he saw no alternative to submission. 'Yes.'

She thanked him, and without shaking hands or saying good-night she went
upstairs and resumed her place by the bedside. She could hear Uncle
Meshach's cab drive away.

'How came Mr. Twemlow to be here, mother?' Rose demanded quietly.

'I don't know,' Leonora replied. 'He must have been at uncle's.'

When the doctor had been again and gone, and various neighbours and the
'Signal' reporter had called to inquire for news, and the hour was
growing late, Ethel said to her mother, 'Fred thinks he had better stay
all night.'

'But why?' Leonora asked.

'Well, mother,' said Milly, 'it's just as well to have a man in the
house.'

'He can rest on the Chesterfield in the drawing-room,' Ethel added.
'Then if he's wanted----'

'Yes, yes,' Leonora agreed. 'And tell him he's very kind.'

At midnight, Fred was reading in the drawing-room, the man in the house,
the ultimate fount of security for seven women. Bessie, having refused
positively to go to bed, slept in a chair in the kitchen, her heels
touching the scrap of hearthrug which lay like a little island on the
red tiles in front of the range. Rose and Millicent had retired to bed
till three o'clock. Ethel, as the eldest, stayed with her mother. When
the hall-clock sounded one, meaning half pas