Julia had disappeared, and the flaring gas-lamps illumined a great barren desert of Brussels carpet and emptiness. Dear Julia always remembered that her good looks were her only dower, and took care not to waste them by late watching in the glare of many gas-burners. Maude sighed as she looked round the empty room, and then seated herself at a table adorned with a gaudy cover that looked like a small Turkey carpet. She took up the impossible Berlin-wool work, and the gold beads, and set herself to the task of counting tiny dots and squares on a coloured paper pattern, with a view to discovering where the Berlin-wool left off and the beads began. But she was tired and unhappy, and the bewildering dots and squares made her head ache; so she pushed away the work presently, and roamed restlessly up and down the room: now stopping by a table, and taking up a book, only to open it haphazard and stare blankly at the pages; now lingering by the piano, noiselessly fingering the notes, and tormented with a wild desire to dash into some blusterous march that should startle the slumbering household. Her father had told her to go to bed. He was going to work very late, and must on no account be disturbed. He had worked late sometimes at Twickenham, but not often; and on those occasions Maude had gone to sleep happily enough, only a little disturbed by the thought of “poor papa” toiling over those cruel business documents. But to-night it was altogether different. At the risk of incurring her father’s anger, Miss Hillary paced wearily up and down the desert of Brussels carpet, waiting till she should hear the merchant’s step on the stairs, and know that his night’s work was over. She waited, oppressed by a vague uneasiness, and wondering why she was uneasy. Why was it that to-night the thought of her father’s toil mingled with all manner of strange fears and misgivings? She was usually so frivolous, so apt to look brightly put upon the sunnier aspects of the world around her; but to-night her heart seemed like a leaden weight in her breast. What was it? why was it? The cheap French clock upon the chimney-piece struck some abnormal number between twelve and twenty, and a distant church clock struck two; but still Miss Hillary waited in vain for that expected step upon the stair. Her father had said that he would be very late, but she had hoped that at the worst his work would be finished in a couple of hours. The time seemed so intolerably long to Maude Hillary, roaming in a purposeless manner about that big room, or standing in the bay-window to listen to the hoarse roaring of the waves, or sitting down to read for five minutes together, but never once knowing what she was reading.