If she had been less ready in thus tracing the effect to the cause, she might have gone to the window to see if any thing had happened, out-of-doors, to frighten Anne--might have seen Geoffrey before he had time to turn the corner of the house--and, making that one discovery, might have altered the whole course of events, not in her coming life only, but in the coming lives of others. So do we shape our own destinies, blindfold. So do we hold our poor little tenure of happiness at the capricious mercy of Chance. It is surely a blessed delusion which persuades us that we are the highest product of the great scheme of creation, and sets us doubting whether other planets are inhabited, because other planets are not surrounded by an atmosphere which _we_ can breathe! After trying such simple remedies as were within her reach, and trying them without success, Blanche became seriously alarmed. Anne lay, to all outward appearance, dead in her arms. She was on the point of calling for help--come what might of the discovery which would ensue--when the door from the hall opened once more, and Hester Dethridge entered the room. The cook had accepted the alternative which her mistress’s message had placed before her, if she insisted on having her own time at her own sole disposal for the rest of that day. Exactly as Lady Lundie had desired, she intimated her resolution to carry her point by placing her account-book on the desk in the library. It was only when this had been done that Blanche received any answer to her entreaties for help. Slowly and deliberately Hester Dethridge walked up to the spot where the young girl knelt with Anne’s head on her bosom, and looked at the two without a trace of human emotion in her stern and stony face. “Don’t you see what’s happened?” cried Blanche. “Are you alive or dead? Oh, Hester, I can’t bring her to! Look at her! look at her!” Hester Dethridge looked at her, and shook her head. Looked again, thought for a while and wrote on her slate. Held out the slate over Anne’s body, and showed what she had written: “Who has done it?” “You stupid creature!” said Blanche. “Nobody has done it.” The eyes of Hester Dethridge steadily read the worn white face, telling its own tale of sorrow mutely on Blanche’s breast. The mind of Hester Dethridge steadily looked back at her own knowledge of her own miserable married life. She again returned to writing on her slate--again showed the written words to Blanche. “Brought to it by a man. Let her be--and God will take her.” “You horrid unfeeling woman! how dare you write such an abominable thing!” With this natural outburst of indignation, Blanche looked back at Anne; and, daunted by the death-like persistency of the swoon, appealed again to the mercy of the immovable woman who was looking down at her. “Oh, Hester! for Heaven’s sake help me!”