Mr. Helbeck smiled rather sourly. "One may doubt where the propriety comes in. Well, she seems determined. We must just arrange it. There is the tower door. Kindly tell her, Augustina, that I will let her have the key of it. And kindly tell her also--as from yourself, of course--that she will be treating us all with courtesy if she does come home at a reasonable hour. We have been a very quiet, prim household all these years, and Mrs. Denton, for all her virtues, has a tongue." "So she has," said Augustina, sighing. "And she doesn't like Laura--not at all." Helbeck raised his head quickly. "She does nothing to make Miss Fountain uncomfortable, I trust?" "Oh--no," said Augustina undecidedly. "Besides, it doesn't matter. Laura has got Ellen under her thumb." Helbeck's grave countenance showed a gleam of amusement. "How does Mrs. Denton take that?" "Oh! she has to bear it. Haven't you seen, Alan, how the girl has brightened up? Laura has shown her how to do her hair; she helped her to make a new frock for Easter; the girl would do anything in the world for her. It's like Bruno. Do you notice, Alan--I really thought you would be angry--that the dog will hardly go with you when Laura's there?" "Oh! Miss Fountain is a very attractive young lady--to those she likes," said Helbeck dryly. And on that he went away. On Good Friday afternoon Laura, in a renewed passion of revolt against all that was going on in the house, went to her room and wrote to her friend. Litanies were being said in the chapel. The distant, melancholy sounds mounted to her now and then. Otherwise the house was wrapped in a mourning silence; and outside, trailing clouds hung round the old walls, making a penitential barrier all about it. "After this week," wrote Laura to her friend, "I shall always feel kindly towards 'sin'--and the 'world'! How they have been scouted and scourged! And what, I ask you, would any of us do without them? The 'world,' indeed! I seem to hear it go rumbling on, the poor, patient, toiling thing, while these people are praying. It works, and makes it possible for them to pray--while they abuse and revile it. "And as to 'sin,' and the gloom in which we all live because of it--what on earth does it really mean to any decently taught and brought-up creature? You are greedy, or selfish, or idle, or ill-behaved. Very well, then--nature, or your next-door neighbor, knocks you down for it, and serve you right. Next time you won't do it again, or not so badly, and by degrees you don't even like to think of doing it--you would be 'ashamed,' as people say. It's the process that everybody has to go through, I suppose--being sent into the world the sort of beings we are, and without any leave of ours, altogether. But why make such a wailing and woe and hullabaloo about it! Oh--such a waste of time! Why doesn't Mr. Helbeck go and learn geology? I vow he hasn't an idea what the rocks of his own valley are made of!