She locked the door, and went down the stair singing. At the foot she called out, "Coming, mother!" and ran to hide the dishes she carried, then back to the door and undid it, still singing her merry ditty. "Why should you bolt the door, my daughter, seeing I was to be gone only a few minutes?" "I was upstairs straightening things a bit, and the town is so full of confusion that I felt a trifle nervous." "But here was the sentinel to protect you." "Oh, I quite forgot him!" she smiled with deprecating politeness at the sentinel, who had paused at the steps and was watching her with an ugly frown upon his sullen face. He touched his hat with a shrug, and moved on upon his beat. But a new terror came to the girl; evidently the man suspected her, and of course his suspicion would be carried to Tarleton. Why had she lingered upstairs talking with Richard? Everything she did worked the wrong way. Would the day never end? She strove to make amends for her false step by singing Tory songs as she went about the house, and by sending the guard a dainty luncheon. It was perhaps an hour before she remembered to ask her mother the result of her interview with Aunt Clevering. "Oh, but I had a sad scene of it! Joscelyn, your tongue will be the ruin of us; I know it, I know it! Neighbour after neighbour has taken offence at your outspoken Toryism; and now Ann Clevering, dear to me as a sister, says she hopes you will never darken her door again. And if you go not, why, neither can I; and so I am cut off from my best friend by your unneighbourly caprice! And think what we have been to each other!" Here sobs choked the unhappy woman's utterance, and she could only turn her eyes reproachfully upon her daughter. Joscelyn was deeply moved, as she always was, to wound her mother; but she put the best face possible on it in order to cheer the disconsolate old lady. "There, mother dear, 'tis not worth crying over. Not go to see Aunt Clevering because I cannot go? Why, that is nonsense. Of course you will go, and she will come here just the same. I will keep out of her way until she forgives me--for she will forgive me, never you fear. I am not surprised at her anger, but it will all come out right in the end; so don't cry, little mother, you break my heart with your tears."