'Go home! Leave me, after all my kindness to you, leave me with no one to take your place! A pretty thing indeed! No, miss, you will stay here till this day six months, according to agreement. Then, if it suits _me_, I may send you packing. Go home, indeed! You would not have a vastly warm welcome, methinks. No, stay here, do your duty in the station of life into which it has pleased God to call you, and you will find activity the best cure for any uneasiness,' Mrs Lambert concluded, with dignified emphasis. Bryda was about to remonstrate, but she felt it would be useless. She must try to possess her soul in patience, and hope that after a little time Mrs Lambert might relent, and, at least, give her leave of absence for a few days. But the efforts to keep up an appearance of cheerfulness, and to be at Madam Lambert's beck and call, was a very great strain on her. Then the gossips who came in to supper or tea were for some days full of the event of the previous Sunday, and Bryda had to sit by and listen to various versions of the story--to reports which one day would be that the murderer had been caught, and the next that the Squire was dead. And then there were whispered questions not intended for Bryda's ear, which concerned her, she was sure, and ominous shakes of the head and glances of curiosity, till often Bryda was constrained to throw down her work and leave the parlour. So passed the long and miserable weeks, with now and again a message from Bet, or a few lines hastily scrawled, and often scarcely legible. The Squire was alive, but light in his head, and seemed to know nothing, nor heed nothing. There seemed no comfort anywhere. Jack was, it is true, out of reach and safe whatever happened; but, as is often the case, the faithful lover of her youth was, by separation, raised to a very much higher level than when he was with her every Sunday, and poor Bryda's heart ached with self-reproach and vain longings that she had been kinder to poor Jack who loved her so well. It was one day in June, when all Nature was rejoicing in the freshness of early summer, that Mr Barrett called at 6 Dowry Square and asked to see Miss Palmer. Bryda was in the kitchen, doing her best to prepare a particular dish to please Mr Lambert for his supper-party that night, when Sam came down to say Mr Barrett wanted to see her on business. Bryda threw off her large apron, pulled her sleeves over her elbows, and with a hasty glance at the little bit of square glass, which distorted her face beyond recognition, she hastened upstairs with a beating heart. She found Mr Barrett in the hall.