“Oh, don’t be angry,” she cried piteously, and put out her trembling hand to touch his coat, to propitiate and pacify him with abject self-humiliation. By this time his passion had begun to wear itself out, but he would not give her any sign of forgiveness. When the cab reached the gate of the Elms, it was thrown open to them by all the servants in a body, who were searching about among the shrubbery with lights. “Oh, here she is, with Mr. Frederick. I know’d she’d be found with Mr. Frederick,” said one of the maids, whom Frederick overheard. Mrs. Eastwood met them at the door, looking pale and frightened. “Oh, thank God, here she is at last!” she cried to Nelly, who was behind. Innocent clutched tightly at Frederick’s arm as she stepped down, bewildered and dazzled by the lights that flashed everywhere around her. He had scolded her cruelly, but yet she clung to him in preference to the women who had been so kind to her. He felt the implied compliment, even in the midst of his wrath. “Yes, I have brought the little fool home,” he cried loudly, that all might hear him. “Where do you think I found her? In the middle of the Brompton Road, with a crowd round, crying, and unable to tell where she came from. What were you thinking of, mother, to let such a child go out alone?” “I! let her go out alone!” cried Mrs. Eastwood, astonished at the undeserved blame. “Are you mad, Frederick? I have been more unhappy about her than I can say. The gardener has gone out to look everywhere, and we have been all over the grounds with lanterns. But bring her in--bring her in. Thank God we have her safe at last!” With the lights apparently flashing all round her, dazzling her eyes, Innocent went in, half dragged by Frederick, to whom she kept clinging. He pushed her roughly into a chair, pulling away his arm. “There! let us see if you can give any account of your escapade,” he said harshly. The tones of his voice, his harsh words, sunk into poor Innocent’s heart like stones sinking into water. She remembered nothing else afterwards, and the pain seemed something more than she could bear. She sat and gazed at them all, holding her old faded cloak round her closely, and showing the stains of mud on it and upon her black frock. Her hair fell limp to her neck: her poor little hat was pushed back from her head. The excitement and distress threw out, as nothing before had done, the peculiar beauty of her face, but a more forlorn figure could not have been seen. Mrs. Eastwood was more anxious and more compassionate than her son. “How was it, Innocent?” she asked: “I am sure you could not mean any harm. Tell me where were you going? where had you been?”