Esther lifts her foolish prone head, and listens. "Skurry--skurry!" go the rats; "Crack!" go the beams; "Thud!" goes some unexplained bulk, in the dining-room underneath! As the tide, at flood, creeps up and over the sands, so the child's old fear creeps up and over her new mad scheme of suicide. "Rustle--rustle!" come the ghostly dresses along the China gallery; "Click, rattle--rattle, click!" goes the door-lock. Down goes the laudanum bottle on the table, and Esther, springing to her feet, begins to unfasten, with fingers rendered nervous by extreme haste, her dress and the belt round her slim waist. "Crack--crack--crack!" goes something close to the bed-head; "Bang!" goes a distant door. There is no wind; what or who can have executed that bang? The fire, which has been burning hollow for some time, collapses, and falls in suddenly with a clear, loud noise. In one leap Miss Craven is in bed and beneath the sheltering bed-clothes. All very well pensively to contemplate, in half-earnest, the conveying oneself out of a world that has been a most harsh step-mother to one, but by no means well to have one's graceful farewells to existence broken in upon by a nation tailed and whiskered--by the spirits of old reprobates in flowered dressing-gowns, and of ladies, who nightly carry their patched and powdered heads like parcels under their arms. Good night, wicked woman! May the rats career all night over your small face, as a punishment for your great idiocy! CHAPTER XXXII. St. John has arrived; he has jumped down from the dog-cart that brought him from the station, wrapped up in a huge greatcoat lined with otter-skin, that makes him look like "three single gentlemen rolled into one." His nose, always rather a salient point in his face, is reddened by the east winds, and his eyelids purple with want of sleep, as he has been travelling night and day--not from any violent hurry to reach his destination, but because boats and mail-trains suited--from the South of Ireland, where for the last ten days he has been daily shooting the wily woodcock, and nightly putting into practice the excellent resolution expressed in the song of "not going home till morning," with some rather fast bachelor-friends, who, like himself, are as yet destitute of household angels, to bring heaven to their hearths, to take away their cues, blow out their cigars, and reduce the number of their brandies and sodas. Neither a good-looking nor a good-tempered young man does he look as he makes his descent. The first he cannot help--the second he can. His ill-humour is owing partly to a violent headache; partly to the information, just imparted to him by the butler, that "the family dines at six o'clock now _reg'lar_--no difference made whatever company there may be--on account of the old squire's 'ealth."