“It’s very wet, ma’am; is the gentleman obliged to go to-night?” “Yes”—and, winking sternly, she opened the street door wide. “Yes, he is obliged to go to-night.” With a puzzled air Jane picked up the portmanteau. Alfred Wimple took it from her with sulky reluctance. For a moment they all stood looking out at the blackness of the fir-trees and listened to the falling rain. Aunt Anne turned to the little hat-stand in the hall. “Here is an umbrella, Alfred,” she said, “and you have your lozenges. Good-night, officer”—and she did not say another word. Alfred Wimple gave her a long look of cowed and baffled hatred, as he went out, followed by the policeman. She shut the door, double-locked it, and drew the bolts at the top and bottom—it was the last sound that Wimple heard as he left the cottage. For a moment she stood still, listening to his footsteps; she waited to hear the click of the gate as it shut behind them. Then, with a strange, dazed manner, as if she were not quite sure that she was awake, she went back to the drawing-room. “If you please, ma’am,” asked the servant, “isn’t Mr. Wimple coming back to-night?—for you won’t like being left alone, and I don’t know what to do about mother.” “You can go to her,” Aunt Anne answered. A desperate longing to be alone was upon her; she wanted to think quietly, and it seemed impossible to do so while any one remained beneath the same roof with her. She was impatient for a spell of loneliness before she died. She felt that she was going to die, that she had heard her death-sentence in the shed beyond the valley. There was no gainsaying it—shame and agony were going to kill her. But first she wanted to be alone, to realize all that had happened, and how it had come about. She remembered suddenly, but only for a moment, that Alfred had stated that Sir William Rammage was dead. It was untrue, of course—Alfred could not have known. Besides, William Rammage’s life or death concerned her no longer; in his money she took no further interest. She only wanted to be alone and to think. “You can go to your mother, Jane,” she repeated; “I wish to be left alone; I have a predilection for solitude.” “Yes, ma’am,” the girl answered hesitatingly—“and you said I was to remind you about the wages; I wouldn’t, only mother’s bad.”