Who was it that could be shut up there? By what right or wrong, without warrant or authority, nobody knowing, nobody able to help! All the questions that had been in Mary’s mind, suspended by her exhaustion, and by the grateful quiet of which she had so much need, sprang up again in the fullest force. The strange words which Hetty had murmured in her trance, which she had repeated when in full possession of her mind, which had evidently engraved themselves on her brain, and which had roused her mother to one sudden gleam of enlightenment, came back to her again and seemed to echo in her ears. She had put them away after that first impression. How could it be? Why should it be? In those days such things could not happen. Shut up the master of the house in his own habitation, separate him from his child, conceal him from the world! How could it be? Who could do it? The motives and the means seemed both wanting. But Mary’s brain throbbed and whirled, even as she said all this to herself. She forgot even Hetty in the gathering excitement of her mind. She walked up and down, up and down, at the foot of the grassy slope on which those barricaded windows opened. Yes, they had always been barricaded, but not as they were now! The night began to darken round her; already the shrubberies, the distant trees in the park, began to grow indistinct. The veil of the twilight dropped slowly over the brightness of the sky. But Mary took no notice; her steps made no sound upon the damp and mossy velvet of the turf; her mind grew every moment less under her own control. What could she do to satisfy that question? Was he there? Who was he? What could she do? She was but a stranger, though a child of the house; she had nothing to prove that the invalid gentleman of whom the doctor had spoken, the wanderer who had broken in upon her child’s rest, had in reality any connection with the family, or was one for whom she could interfere: and how could she interfere?--a stranger, a poor woman, the mother of Miss Rotherham’s companion. That was all Mary was to the servants and people about. And the invalid might be a stranger too, for anything she could tell; he might be--anyone. What right had she to jump to a conclusion, and decide thus who he was? But she could not go in quietly and sit down, and take care of her child, and perhaps sleep, while all the while, close to her, within her reach, might be shut up, deprived of everything, one who perhaps was the rightful master of all. But how could that be? How could that be? Why, and with what motive, could such a thing be done? Her brain turned round more than ever, her mind was all confused, hanging in the misery of doubt and helplessness, suspended between the how and the why.