And when he came in and poured out his narrative, he was, for the first time in his life, even petulant that his mother was too much preoccupied to confirm his promises, and angry when Allen laughed at his vehemence, and said he should beware of model parishes.

By dinner-time the next day Janet had actually arrived.  She looked thin and sharp, her keen black eyes roamed about uneasily, and some indescribable change had passed over her.  Her brothers told her study had not agreed with her, and she did not, as of old, answer tartly, but gave a stiff, mechanical smile, and all the evening talked in a woman-of-the-world manner, cleverly, agreeably, not putting out her prickles, but like a stranger, and as if on her guard.

Of course there was no speaking to her till bedtime, and Caroline at first felt as if she ought to let one night pass in peace under the home roof; but she soon felt that to sleep would be impossible to herself, and she thought it would be equally so to her daughter without coming to an understanding.  She yearned for some interchange of tenderness from that first-born child from whom she had been so long separated, and watched and listened for a step approaching her door; till at last, when the maid was gone and no one came, she yielded to her impulse; and in her white dressing-gown, with softly-slippered feet, she glided along the passage with a strange mixed feeling of maternal gladness that Janet was at home again, and of painful impatience to have the interview over.

She knocked at the door.  There was no answer.  She opened it.  There was no one there, but the light on the terrace below, thrown from the windows of the lower room, was proof to her that Janet was in her sitting-room, and she began to descend the private stairs that led down to it.  She was as light in figure and in step as ever, and her soft slippers made no noise as she went down.  The door in the wainscot was open, and from the foot of the stairs she had a strange view.  Janet’s candle was on the chair behind her, in front of it lay half-a-dozen different keys, and she herself was kneeling before the bureau, trying one of the keys into the lock.  It would not fit, and in turning to try another, she first saw the white figure, and started violently at the first moment, then, as the trembling, pleading voice said, “Janet,” she started to her feet, and cried out angrily—-

“Am I to be always spied and dogged?”

“Hush, Janet,” said her mother, in a voice of grave reproof, “I simply came to speak to you about the distressing loss of what your father put in my charge.”

“And why should I know anything about it?” demanded Janet.

“You were the last person who had access to the davenport,” said her mother.

“This is that child Barbara’s foolish nonsense,” muttered Janet to herself.

“Barbara has nothing to do with the fact that I sent you the key of the davenport where the book was.  It is now missing.  Janet, it is bitterly painful to me to say so, but your endeavours to open that bureau privately have brought suspicion upon you, and I must have it opened in my presence.”