r so binding a promise, when the morning came she would
not be there. He had again taken her hand, and was using all his
eloquence, still speaking in low whispers, when there was heard a
cough,--not loud, but very distinct,--Tetchen's cough as she stood at
the kitchen door. Ludovic Valcarm, though the necessity for movement
was so close upon him, would not leave Linda's hand till he had again
pressed a kiss upon her mouth. Now, at last, in this perilous moment,
there was some slightest movement on Linda's lips, which he flattered
himself he might take as a response. Then, in a moment, he was gone
and her door was shut, and he was escaping, after his own fashion,
into the darkness,--she knew not whither and she knew not how, except
that there was a bitter flavour of brimstone about it all.

She seated herself at the foot of the bed lost in amazement. She must
first think,--she was bound first to think, of his safety; and yet
what in the way of punishment could they do to him comparable to the
torments which they could inflict upon her? She listened, and she
soon heard Peter Steinmarc creaking in the room below. Tetchen had
coughed because Peter was as usual going to his room, but had Ludovic
remained at her door no one would have been a bit the wiser. No doubt
Ludovic, up among the rafters, was thinking the same thing; but there
must be no renewal of their intercourse that night, and therefore
Linda bolted her door. As she did so, she swore to herself that she
would not unbolt it again that evening at Ludovic's request. No
such encroaching request was made to her. She sat for nearly an
hour at the foot of her bed, waiting, listening, fearing, thinking,
hoping,--hardly hoping, when another step was heard on the stair and
in the passage,--a step which she well knew to be that of her aunt
Charlotte. Then she arose, and as her aunt drew near she pulled back
the bolt and opened the door. The little oil lamp which she held
threw a timid fitful light into the gloom, and Linda looked up
unconsciously into the darkness of the roof over her head.

It had been her custom to return to her aunt's parlour as soon as she
heard Peter creaking in the room below, and she had still meant to do
so on this evening; but hitherto she had been unable to move, or at
any rate so to compose herself as to have made it possible for her to
go into her aunt's presence. Had she not had the whole world of her
own love story to fill her mind and her hea