Mr. Reed had fled before the good woman was fairly embarked on her harangue, and she talked and worked, bustled about the room, and scolded the maids, and hustled the constable, who stood shame-faced but obstinate in the doorway. But by the time Mrs. Joyce had decked the chamber with every luxury she could invent to do due honour to her guest, her temper had cooled, and her prudence began to revive. "Lackaday," she lamented, "if I meddle I may but make matters worse! Thou great fool"--turning viciously on the constable, "it would do my heart good to give thee a clout on the head! But I reckon 'tis treason or such like to lay hands on a constable! I be fairly 'mazed! But my dear--madam, I should say, do you take notice I lie in the next chamber, and if you feel a bit swimmy or afeared in the night, if you'll please to give a call, I'll up and serve you, spite of all the constables in creation!" Audrey could only smile as grateful an answer as her trembling lips could muster, and the constable, catching a moment when Mrs. Joyce had fairly talked herself out of breath, bundled her out of the room without ceremony, and turned the key on the prisoner. CHAPTER IX. A PRECIOUS THING DISCOVERED LATE. "One can't disturb the dust of years And smile serenely." AUSTIN DOBSON. Audrey was left alone! And in what a room was she imprisoned! It was her grandfather's own chamber! The firelight played on the panelled walls with which she had once been so familiar, and the figures on the tapestry curtains seemed to smile a grim welcome to the daughter of the house. Here she had sat on her grandfather's knee, and heard fairy tales and legends of old days; here she had often watched by him when he grew old, and knelt at his side when the vicar read prayers; here she had seen his good white head laid in the coffin, and kissed the cold lips that had never bidden her farewell. What a strange fate had brought her now back to say farewell to her old home! She sank back in the great chair that stood in its accustomed place by the hearth, bewildered by the whirl of thoughts that chased each other through her brain. The five years that had passed since last she sat in that room, although they had dragged on slowly enough, seemed now to her only a sort of parenthesis in her life. As she had left her old home she had come back to it--the years of poverty and trouble seemed but a bad dream--it would have been most natural to her to find herself once more the mistress of Hunstanton Place.