'I didn't get much sleep, either.' It was an unheard-of admission from Wark. 'Oh!' said Vida, lazily sipping her tea. 'Bad conscience?' 'No,' she said slowly, 'no.' As the woman raised her light eyes, Miss Levering saw, to her astonishment, that the lids were red. Wark, too, seemed uncomfortably aware of something unusual in her face, for she turned it away, and busied herself in smoothing down the near corner of the bath blanket. 'What kept _you_ awake?' Miss Levering asked. 'Well, I suppose I'd better tell you while the other people aren't round. I want a day or two to go into the country.' 'Into the country?' No such request had been heard for a round dozen of years. 'I've got some business to see to.' 'At home? In Northumberland?' 'No.' The tone seemed so little to promise anything in the nature of a confidence that Miss Levering merely said-- 'Oh, very well. When do you want to go?' 'I could go to-morrow if----' She stopped, and looked down at the hem of her long white apron. Something unwonted in the wooden face prompted Miss Levering to say-- 'What do you want to do in the country?' 'To see about a place that's been offered me.' 'A _place_, Wark!' 'Yes; post of housekeeper. That's what I really am, you know.' Miss Levering looked at her, and set down the half-finished cup without opening her lips. If the speech had come from any other than Wark, it would have been easy to believe it merely the prelude to complaint of a fellow-servant or plea for a rise in wages. But if Wark objected to a fellow-servant, her own view of the matter had always been that the other one should go. Her mistress knew quite well that in the mouth of the woman standing there with red eyes at the foot of the bed, such an announcement as had just been made, meant more. And the consciousness seemed to bring with it a sense of acute discomfort not unmixed with anger. For there was a threat of something worse than an infliction of mere inconvenience. It was a species of desertion. It was almost treachery. They had lived together all the younger woman's life, except for those two years that followed on the girl's attempt to make a conventional servant out of a creature who couldn't be that, but who had it in her to be more. They had been too long together for Wark not to divine something--through all the lady's self-possession--of her sense of being abandoned. 'It's having to tell you that that kept me awake.' The wave of dull colour that mounted up to the bushy, straw-coloured eyebrows seemed on the way to have overflowed into her eyes. They grew redder than before, and slowly they filled. 'You don't like living here in this house.' Vida caught at the old complication.