"When I have given my orders, perhaps," said Nelly. She would not stop even to forbid the familiarity of his address. She walked out of the room with composed steps, but as soon as she was outside flew up the dark staircase to the nursery, where nurse, an anxious and troubled woman, was not yet asleep. Mrs Brunton went in like a ghost to the room in which the night-light was burning, where the children were breathing softly in their cribs. "Nurse," she said, with all the composure she could command, "Mr Fitzroy has come back; he has lost his train. I want you to get up and prepare the spare room for him. I am sorry: but what else can we do?" Nurse looked fixedly at her mistress in the light of the candle which Nelly had just lighted, and which came to life in a sudden glare upon her agitated face. "Yes, ma'am," she said quietly, beginning to dress. What a strange agitated scene in the middle of the silent night! The man below could not have been more dismayed by the appearance of a band of soldiers than he was by the quiet, respectable, respectful maid-servant who came in with a candle to show him to his room, and whose polite determination to get rid of him, to put out the lamp and see that everything was safe for the night, was full of the most perfect calm. "I'll go up-stairs presently; but you need not wait," he said. "Oh, sir, I don't mind waiting; but my mistress likes me to see the lights out. I'll be in the next room when you are ready, sir, to show you the way." He was moved at last to ask impatiently, "Is not Mrs Brunton coming down-stairs again?" "Oh dear no, sir; my mistress is passing the night in the nursery, for Master Jack is a little feverish, and he never will part with his mamma when once he sees her. If she offered to go away he'd scream so, he'd raise the whole house." Fitzroy glared at this guardian of the little helpless household--a very respectful, very obliging maid-servant--making light of the trouble a nocturnal visitor gave. He could no more have resisted or insulted this woman than if she had been a queen. He followed her quite humbly to his room, not daring to say a word. He might as well have been in a hotel, he said bitterly to himself. When nurse went back she found poor Nelly sitting on the floor between the two little beds, her head leaning on one of them, holding fast the rail of the other, and weeping as if her heart would break. Next morning Mr Fitzroy left the cottage early, without asking to see Mrs Brunton. It was, indeed, too early to disturb the lady of the house. CHAPTER VII. Mrs Brunton woke next morning with an aching head and a confused mind, not knowing for a moment what had happened to her. Was it a nightmare? a dreadful dream? She had not slept till morning, and then had fallen into an unrestful torpor, full of the broken reminiscences of the night. A nightmare! that was most like what it was--until she came to herself all at once, and remembered everything.