ything was the same as it had been when
she first saw it, a child of eight; there was her old red doll's house,
the whole side of which opened to display the various floors; the worn
Venetian blinds, the rattle of whose fall had sounded in her ears so
many hundred times; the high fender, near which she had lain so often
on the floor, her chin on her hands, reading Grimm, or "Alice in
Wonderland," or histories of England. Here, too, perhaps this new child
would live amongst the old familiars. And the whim seized her to face
her hour in her old nursery, not in the room where she had slept as a
girl. She would not like the daintiness of that room deflowered. Let
it stay the room of her girlhood. But in the nursery--there was safety,
comfort! And when she had been at Mildenham a week, she made Betty
change her over.

No one in that house was half so calm to look at in those days as Gyp.
Betty was not guiltless of sitting on the stairs and crying at odd
moments. Mrs. Markey had never made such bad soups. Markey so far forgot
himself as frequently to talk. Winton lamed a horse trying an impossible
jump that he might get home the quicker, and, once back, was like an
unquiet spirit. If Gyp were in the room, he would make the pretence of
wanting to warm his feet or hand, just to stroke her shoulder as he went
back to his chair. His voice, so measured and dry, had a ring in
it, that too plainly disclosed the anxiety of his heart. Gyp, always
sensitive to atmosphere, felt cradled in all the love about her.
Wonderful that they should all care so much! What had she done for
anyone, that people should be so sweet--he especially, whom she had so
grievously distressed by her wretched marriage? She would sit staring
into the fire with her wide, dark eyes, unblinking as an owl's at
night--wondering what she could do to make up to her father, whom
already once she had nearly killed by coming into life. And she began to
practise the bearing of the coming pain, trying to project herself into
this unknown suffering, so that it should not surprise from her cries
and contortions.

She had one dream, over and over again, of sinking and sinking into a
feather bed, growing hotter and more deeply walled in by that which
had no stay in it, yet through which her body could not fall and reach
anything more solid. Once, after this dream, she got up and spent the
rest of the night wrapped in a blanket and the eider-down, on the old
sofa, where, as a