Before entering the house, in her anxiety about her father, Kate ran to the mooring-place of the boats, and came back in some exultation to Jan. “I said so. He has crossed. The old boat is gone.” “It was there yesterday. It was there all the night of the fire and next day. It has been taken since,” answered Pooke. Kate was downcast. She held out her hand to Jan, took her little bundle, and entered the house. Her aunt had not come out to meet her. That she had not expected. No one in that house had shown her graciousness and desire for her presence, and she had ceased to expect it. When she entered, it was with a hesitating foot. She thought that Rose, out of good nature and desire to please, had represented her aunt as more desirous to have her than she really was. Having never met with affection on the part of Zerah, hardly with recognition of her services, she did not anticipate a complete change in demeanour. She was surprised to find that her aunt had not lighted a candle. She called to her, when Zerah replied, with a cry that thrilled Kate to her heart’s core, “Is that my Kitty? My child come back to me?” In another moment aunt and niece were locked in each other’s arms, and sobbing out their hearts,’Kate, through joy, dashed with dread of evil; Zerah, through joy at seeing her niece again, a joy that sprang out of despair. A singular relation now developed itself between them. After a very short while, Kitty perceived that there was something on her aunt’s mind, that Zerah was weighed down with a sense of some calamity far exceeding that of the loss of so many tons of coal and so many fleeces of wool. The woman was suddenly become timid and apprehensive. It gave her pain to speak of what had taken place, and she avoided by every kind of subterfuge expressing an opinion as to the cause of the fire, and as to the extent of the damage done. She had for some years faced the prospect of financial ruin, and if this had come upon her, Kate was sure she would have met it, not indeed with equanimity, but with sullen assurance that it was inevitable, and have prepared herself to accept the new position of poverty. But that which occupied and disorganised the heart of Zerah was something else, something more tearful. Kate saw that she shrank not only from allusion to the fire, but from inquiries as to the fate of her brother, and whenever Jason was named or referred to, the woman caught her niece to her bosom and covered her with kisses, wept, trembled, but said nothing. Mrs. Pepperill took Kate from her little attic-room to share her bed during the absence of Pasco, and the girl found that the trouble which weighed on her aunt during the day haunted and tortured her during the night. Zerah slept little, tossed in her bed; and if she slept, broke into moans and exclamations.