She was relieved when the whole carriage load turned out at the next station: she and Maud were left alone, and she had time to collect her thoughts. Her triumph was complete! She had paid Pattie out thoroughly and she was satisfied. The opportunity for her vengeance had come to her and she had seized it without fear and without regret. How clever it was of her to have thought of that fiction about her sister and the new baby! It would do for Jim too, admirably, and he would never find out. She doubted if he even knew where in the outskirts of Old Keston her sister lived. He might even not know her married name! He would accept the story as she gave it, especially now that he was beginning to drink again. Well! he could drink as much as he liked, so long as he brought her her money and Harry's money regularly! In a day or two she would take the child back to Old Keston, ostensibly to see its mother and the new baby, but in reality she would take it in the dark to its own gate, and leave it to make its own presence known. In the meantime Pattie would be dismissed without a character, with a multitude of blame upon her head, if indeed she escaped so easily. They might think Pattie had stolen the child, and clap her into prison till she was found! That would be vengeance indeed! CHAPTER XX. REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. "It is worse than death," sobbed Mrs. Brougham, and they all felt that it was so. They were gathered at home at last, in the small hours of the night, for there was nothing more that they could do till morning came to wake the world again--that wide desolate world of houses and roads, of byways and slums; that world in which, _somewhere_, was their little Maud. Pale, wide-eyed and silent, they all tried to eat the supper which Pattie, pale and wide-eyed too, set before them, for they thought of the day that would soon dawn, when they would need their strength to begin the search again, and though it seemed horrible to be seeking rest in their comfortable beds while their little sister's fate was unsolved, yet for that same reason, slowly and lingeringly they all said good-night and crept upstairs. For in vain they had searched for little Maud all the evening long. Police, neighbours, friends, had all helped, but no trace, not even the faintest clue, had come to light. Porters, booking-clerks, railway officials, cabmen, had all been questioned to no purpose. Everybody talked about the dog-fight, nobody had even seen a child, though a porter averred that he had seen the empty chair long before the dogs came on the scene, and a workman that there had been no chair there at all when the up-train came in. He had stood on the very spot where the chair was supposed to be, watching through the window for a friend, with his bag of tools on the ground beside him. He had moved forward to speak to his friend, and returning a few moments later when the train had gone, to take up the tools, had then noticed the empty chair.