At that moment Mrs. Rusk announced that Doctor Bryerly would see Lady Knollys at any time she pleased before his departure.

‘It shall be this moment, then,’ said the energetic lady, and up she stood, and made that hasty general adjustment before the glass, which, no matter under what circumstances, and before what sort of creature one’s appearance is to be made, is a duty that every woman owes to herself.  And I heard her a moment after, at the stair-head, directing Branston to let Dr. Bryerly know that she awaited him in the drawing-room.

And now she was gone, and I began to wonder and speculate.  Why should my cousin Monica make all this fuss about, after all, a very natural arrangement?  My uncle, whatever he might have been, was now a good man—­a religious man—­perhaps a little severe; and with this thought a dark streak fell across my sky.

A cruel disciplinarian! had I not read of such characters?—­lock and key, bread and water, and solitude!  To sit locked up all night in a dark out-of-the-way room, in a great, ghosty, old-fashioned house, with no one nearer than the other wing.  What years of horror in one such night!  Would not this explain my poor father’s hesitation, and my cousin Monica’s apparently disproportioned opposition?  When an idea of terror presents itself to a young person’s mind, it transfixes and fills the vision, without respect of probabilities or reason.

My uncle was now a terrible old martinet, with long Bible lessons, lectures, pages of catechism, sermons to be conned by rote, and an awful catalogue of punishments for idleness, and what would seem to him impiety.  I was going, then, to a frightful isolated reformatory, where for the first time in my life I should be subjected to a rigorous and perhaps barbarous discipline.

All this was an exhalation of fancy, but it quite overcame me.  I threw myself, in my solitude, on the floor, upon my knees, and prayed for deliverance—­prayed that Cousin Monica might prevail with Doctor Bryerly, and both on my behalf with the Lord Chancellor, or the High Sheriff, or whoever else my proper deliverer might be; and when my cousin returned, she found me quite in an agony.

‘Why, you little fool! what fancy has taken possession of you now?’ she cried.

And when my new terror came to light, she actually laughed a little to reassure me, and she said—­

’My dear child, your uncle Silas will never put you through your duty to your neighbour; all the time you are under his roof you’ll have idleness and liberty enough, and too much, I fear.  It is neglect, my dear, not discipline, that I’m afraid of.’

’I think, dear Cousin Monica, you are afraid of something more than neglect,’ I said, relieved, however.