"Well, if ever the worst were to happen, and he should turn nasty, I have the money now." She got up, and stood looking into the fire once again "Only if," she said slowly, "he will not be satisfied with money, if he...." She shivered, not once, but several times, and hurriedly taking up the sleeping draught her maid had prepared, she swallowed it, and then got into bed; where she lay staring at the shadows on the walls and ceiling made by the dancing flames of the fire, till her eyes closed at last unconsciously in the sleep she had commanded. CHAPTER V Another person lay in bed that night watching the fireglow light up the room and make fantastic patterns and shadows on the walls. Caroline had been thoroughly tired out when Mrs. Brenton's maid had arranged everything and she had been left alone. But she was too tired to sleep. The strangeness of her surroundings, and the strangeness of her position generally, filled her with a kind of excitement. She had not very much in front of her of a pleasurable nature, and yet the morrow had for her a certain glamour. As the first sensation of alarm and indignation provoked naturally by the treatment she had received, by the abruptness with which her life of dependence had been ended, died away, Caroline became conscious that there was an undoubted charm about her present situation. A day before, the future (when she had thought about it) had stretched before her in a grey, a monotonous, an almost desolate fashion. Now all things were possible, and hope began almost immediately to shed a glow on her thoughts. It was an amazingly delightful sensation to feel that she owned no master. Indeed, she felt a little irritated now with herself that she should have supported so much with such an unquestioning docility, or that having given so much obedience she should never have tried to satisfy herself why this should have been exacted. At school, of course, it had been the outcome of rules, of a _régime_ which had existed ever since she could remember, but when the school life had ended, and she had gone to Mrs. Baynhurst, there really had been no occasion, so she told herself now, to have accepted the laws laid down for her with the same old obedience. "Only she really never gave me the chance to speak," the girl mused to herself, "and then I was such a little idiot when I first met her that she frightened me! I expect she will be furious because I went to Mr. Haverford. Now that I have seen him and spoken with him, it is easy enough to understand why his mother prefers to see him only on rare occasions. He has a blunt, straightforward way about him which must be an abomination to her. He was not too amiable to me. Still, I must do him justice," Caroline admitted here readily; "he saw at once that I had a sort of claim on him, and duty with him evidently counts for a good deal." She turned comfortably on the soft pillow.