I thought it was a message for me, and have said it so often to myself. Oh, my heart's desire, my heart's desire!" she cried, and then covered her face with her hands. "Why are you so full of fears, Esther?" I asked. "My Harry is delicate," she whispered, "and Sir Rupert is wicked and strong." "God is stronger than Sir Rupert." "Oh, Hilda, can you imagine the unnaturalness of the man that makes him hate his own flesh and blood? No one knows how much my Harry has been made to suffer in that house. He says it is his grandfather's way of trying to drive him out of it. I wonder if he is right in staying?" "He has only his own light to go by, as each of us has, Essie. We must leave him to its guidance." "He says his presence is in some sort a check on the orgies of those two wretched men. But if he dies under it? Has he no duty to me and to his own life?" "You exaggerate, darling, I am sure. One need not die even of such an unholy place as Angry." "Not if one were strong. But he has never yet recovered of his hurt, and he is not likely to at Castle Angry." She broke off suddenly and began to cry. "I am forgetting that for four months I have had no word of him, and that now the letters that ought to have brought him so eagerly to my side remain unanswered. Where is he, Hilda? Where? How do I know but that he is already dead, and so escaped his enemies? If he were living and well he would surely have come." "Be quiet, darling. You are letting your fear run wild. People are not made away with like that in the nineteenth century. Perhaps the letters have not reached him. Perhaps they have been kept from him, or he is not there. He may have sickened of Angry and gone back to Warwickshire." "No, he might have gone, but he would have returned. He would not stay long away from where I am." She lifted her head for a moment in proud confidence. Then it drooped again as a flower droops heavy with rain. "You would never think, Esther, that he could be silent because he had forgotten you?" "Never that. Nothing could separate us but death." "Well, Esther," said I, "be quiet and keep your heart calm. We shall know something to-morrow, for Sir Rupert is to come here at five o'clock." "Sir Rupert!" "Yes. We had not meant to tell you, but now I think it is better. Lady O'Brien wrote that she wanted to see him, and he has written saying he will come." She looked at me with distended eyes. "Under this roof!" she muttered to herself. "At least we shall find out where his grandson is." "Yes, we surely shall. He will have to answer a plain question, won't he, Hilda? To think of the godmother drawing him like that." "If he had not come she would have invaded him in his den." "Dear, brave little soul! I have not deserved such love, Hilda." "For an undeserving person, you seem to receive quite a large share," I said drily. "Yes, don't I?" she answered in her simple way. Then she went on: