ne of the wooden chairs in the hall.

"Won't you come down-stairs?" said Jenkins. "My missus is there."

"No, I won't. I want to see Mrs. Vane; and perhaps she'll get away or
refuse to see me if I am down-stairs. Sitting here, she can't escape so
easy. I want Mrs. Vane."

Jenkins shrugged his shoulders.

"You seem to have got a grudge against her," he observed. "Didn't she
pay you properly?"

"No, she didn't--not that it's any business of yours," Sabina remarked.

And, after that speech, Jenkins retired with dignity, feeling that it
was not his part to converse any longer with a woman who chose to be so
very impolite to him.

"She looks very queer!" he observed to his wife down-stairs. "She's in
black, and her eyes are red as if she'd been crying, and her face as
white as death. I think she looks as if she was going out of her mind."

Whereupon Mrs. Jenkins herself went up-stairs to inspect the dangerous
Sabina, but came down with the report that "she looked quiet enough."
And so the afternoon went on--and still Mrs. Vane did not arrive. But
Cynthia did.

When Sabina heard Miss West's voice speaking to the maid at the door,
she gave a violent start. Then she rose and went cautiously into a
little room which opened off the hall, and stood behind the door, so
that Cynthia could not see her. As soon as Cynthia had gone up-stairs,
Sabina dashed out into the hall again, and inspected the square through
the pane of glass at the side of the hall door.

"It's him sure enough," she said to herself, "and his daughter's gone
up-stairs! Well, they are bold as brass, the pair of them! They didn't
ought to be allowed to escape, I'm sure; but I don't know what to do. I
wish Mrs. Vane would come home, and the General too. They'd take care he
was nabbed fast enough! And here they come!"

For at that moment Miss Vane's carriage drove up to the door, and out of
it came its owner, as well as Mrs. Vane and the General. Sabina opened
the door before the man had time to knock. And no sooner had Mrs. Vane
entered than she was confronted by Sabina.

"What do you want here!" she asked.

Sabina had, as Flossy expected, come with demands that would not perhaps
have been easy to satisfy; but all her plans were swept away by the
appearance of Westwood in the square. Sabina did not attempt to stand on
ceremony.

"For goodness' sake, ma'am, don't go up-stairs nor let them go just
yet!" she said hurriedly. "There's the man Westwood in