Rosalind stole out into the hall with a beating heart. Her father’s sharp voice still echoed in her ears, and she had an angry and ashamed consciousness that the footman who had hurried from the room before her, and perhaps other servants, excited by the crisis, were watching her and commenting upon the indecision with which she stood, not knowing what to do. “Go and tell her.” How easy it was to say so! Oh, if she but knew where to go, how to find her, how to save her not only from domestic strife but from the gnawing worm of suspicion and doubt which Rosalind felt in her own heart! What was she to do? Should she go up-stairs again and look through all the rooms, though she knew it would be in vain? To disarm her father’s rage, to smooth over this moment of misery and put things back on their old footing, the girl would have done anything; but as the moments passed she became more and more aware that this was not nearly all that was wanted, that even she herself, loving Mrs. Trevanion with all her heart, required more. Her judgment cried out for more. She wanted explanation; a reason for these strange disappearances. Why should she choose that time of all others when her absence must be so much remarked; and where, oh, where did she go? Rosalind stood with a sort of stupefied sense of incapacity in the hall. She would not go back. She could not pretend to make a search which she knew to be useless. She could not rush to the door again and watch there, with the risk of being followed and found at that post, and thus betray her suspicion that her mother was out of the house. She went and stood by one of the pillars and leaned against it, clasping her hands upon her heart and trying to calm herself and to find some expedient. Could she say that little Jack was ill, that something had happened? in the confusion of her mind she almost lost the boundary between falsehood and truth; but then the doctor would be sent to see what was the matter, and everything would be worse instead of better. She stood thus against the pillar and did not move, trying to think, in a whirl of painful imaginations and self-questionings, feeling every moment an hour. Oh, if she could but take it upon herself, and bear the weight, whatever it might be; but she was helpless and could do nothing save wait there, hidden, trembling, full of misery, till something should happen to set her free.