I made some trifling answer; and returning to my own domain, with all the pangs of loneliness added to those of terror, sat down in the dingy, dreary taskroom and abandoned myself to bitter forebodings. She did not, she never could have loved me! I knew it and felt it now. Yet I must think of her or go mad. I must think of her or of the cart and cord; and so, through the hours that followed, I had only eyes for the next garden, and ears for her voice. The boys and their chattering, and the necessity I was under of playing my part before them, well-nigh mastered me. For, at any hour, on any day, while I sat there among them, Mr. and Mrs. D---- might return, and the loss be discovered; and yet, and though time was everything, all the efforts I made to see Jennie or get speech with her failed; and of myself I seemed to be unable to think out any plan or way of escape. I am sure that the most ascetic, could he have weighed the tortures of those four days during which I sat surrounded by the boys, and now making frantic efforts to appear myself, now sunk in a staring, pale-faced lethargy of despair, would have deemed them a punishment more than commensurate with my guilt. The unusual air of peace and quietness with which Mrs. D----'s absence invested the school had no more power to soothe me than the presence of Mrs. Harris, nodding over her plain-stitch in the next garden, availed to banish the burning gusts of fear that at times parched my skin. At length, on the fifth day, the immediate warning of coming judgment arrived in the shape of a letter announcing that my employer would return (D.V.) by the night waggon, which in the ordinary course was due to reach Ware about six next morning. At that I could stand the strain no longer, but flinging appearance and deception to the winds, I rose from the class I was pretending to teach, and in a disorder I made no effort to suppress, followed Mrs. Harris; who, having declared the news, was already waddling back to the next house. She started at sight of me in her train--as she well might, for it was the busiest time of the day; then asked if anything ailed me. "No," I said. "I want a word with Jennie." "Do you?" quoth she, looking hard at me. "So, it would seem, do a good many young fellows. She is a nice handful if ever there was one." "Why?" I stammered. "Why?" she answered in a tone very sharp for her. "Why, because--but what have you to do with Jennie, young man?" "Nothing," I said. "Then have nothing," she answered promptly, and shook her sides at her sharpness. "That is no puzzle! And as it is no more than half-past ten, and I hear your boys rampaging like so many wild Irishmen--suppose you go back to them, young man!"