"No, because I am never in a hurry. I take a long time to make up my mind about anything, good or bad. If you had waited five minutes to think about it, you would never have played that hose; but never mind, Mil, some time there will be a brave thing to do, and you will have risked your life and done it, while I am still trembling on the brink. It works both ways, you see!" Bertha patted her friend on the arm with an air of gracious condescension, and bidding her an affectionate good-night, returned to her own room. Left to herself, Mildred began to undress in listless, disconsolate fashion. She was tired with the day's exertions, and sorely troubled about the escapade of the morning. Lady Sarah's face haunted her. If Bertha and Lois were shocked, what, oh! what, would be their mother's feelings? "She will be grieved in earnest this time," Mildred sighed to herself. "Oh, goodness, I wonder why it is that I am always getting into trouble! I mean to be good, I have the best intentions... Mrs Faucit will look at me as she did that day when I flew into a passion. I hate to be looked at like that. Great, solemn eyes, as if her heart were broken! And it was all my fault this time... I wish I could be calm and deliberate. I'll begin to-morrow, and count twenty to myself before I say a single word." She crept into bed and laid her head upon the pillows with a weary sigh, but sleep was long in coming, and even when the lids closed over the tired eyes, the groans which forced themselves through the closed lips, the nervous twitches of the limbs, showed that an uneasy conscience pursued her into the land of dreams. How long she slept Mildred never knew, but it seemed as if at one moment she was lost in unconsciousness, and at the next she was awake--wide, wide awake,--with her heart beating like a sledge-hammer, and an unusual chilling of fear in her veins. Something had aroused her--what was it? The echo of the sound rang in her ears, shrill, piteous, beseeching. What could it have been? Mildred sat up in bed and looked searchingly round the room. The light was high enough to show the furthest corner. The door was closed, the window as she had left it, the sash opened a few inches at the bottom; the tick of the little clock on the mantel-piece sounded clearly in the silence. All looked so calm, so peaceful, so safe, that Mildred drew a breath of relief and was preparing to burrow down again among the clothes, when her heart leapt at a repetition of the same mysterious sound. There was no mistaking it this time. It was the sound of a voice raised in a wail of such bitter, helpless pleading as left the listener trembling with nervousness.