These moments of witchcraft gazing were not many. They had been deliberately begun, and were deliberately done with. Within their span her cares were faced and co-ordinated; and the business over, she sighed and sank more snugly into her chair. She leaned back; her hands crossed themselves in her lap; she shut her eyes. All the lines upon her face softened, melted away. She looked now like an Oread aswoon in the midday heats, pure of thought or dread or memory. Her bosom below her laces rose and fell gently. She slept. Outside, in the dusky dark, was one who padded up and down the grass on noiseless feet, passing and repassing the window, with an eye for the narrow chink of light. She slept for a very short time. Towards ten o'clock she awoke. Collecting herself luxuriously, she was seen to face her facts again. Evidently they held her eyes waking; they were dreadfully there, still unresolved or still unpalatable. Before them now she plainly quailed. The flush of her sleep gave delicacy to her carven beauty; she looked fragile and tremulous; it would seem that a little more pity of herself would bring her to tears. As if she knew it, she took her measures, rose abruptly, and after two turns about the room went to a safe, opened it, and plunged herself into the ledger-book, which she took from it. Upon that and a cash-box--with certain involuntary pauses, in which her eyes concentrated and stared--she remained closely engaged until half-past eleven. At that hour, having ascertained it, she put by her work, went into her bedroom, and began a deliberate and careful toilet. She was pale, serious, and evidently rather scared at herself; she lifted her eyebrows and opened wide her eyes. But she did what she had to do as daintily as ever Amina, in the Arab tale, figured her rice. A person of great simplicity, who did extraordinary things in an ordinary way, at the hour when all Wanless was going to bed, she brushed and banded her shining hair, and dressed herself in silk and lace as for a dinner party. To herself in the glass she gave and received again a face of pure pity and sorrow. She saw herself lovely and love-worthy, sleek under the caress of her own beauty. Yet she knew exactly what she was about to do, and how she would do it, and did not falter at all. At a quarter past twelve her summons came--a knock at the door, the turning of the handle, the push to open, and Ingram's voice. “Come along, Sancie,” he said, and went away without any more ceremony. She got up from her chair, put her book down, having marked her place, and followed him after a few minutes' meditation. Ingram's quarters were on the ground floor of the house, as hers were, but in the opposite wing. She had two rooms in the western arm of the E; the whole of the eastern was his.