She lay long awake in the tiny cupboard-room that the labourer and his wife had given up to her, hearing the horses stamp in the cold shed at the back of the house, and the faces moved and turned like the colours of a kaleidoscope. Now her father’s eyes and mouth hung like a mask before her, with that terrible look that had been on them as he faced Ralph at the end; now Ralph’s own face, defiant, icy, melting in turns; now Margaret’s with wide terrified eyes, as she had seen it in the parlour that afternoon; now her own husband’s. And the sweet autumn woods and meadows lay before her as she had seen them during that silent ride; the convent, the village, her own home with its square windows and yew hedge--a hundred images. * * * * * There was a talking when she awoke for the last time and through the crazy door glimmered a crack of grey dawn, and as she listened she knew that Chris was come. It was a strange meeting when she came out a few minutes later. There was the monk, unshaven and pale under the eyes, with his thinned face that gave no smile as she came in; her father desperately white and resolved; Mr. Morris, spruce and grave as usual sitting with his hat between his knees behind the others;--he rose deferentially as she came in and remained standing. Her father began abruptly as she appeared. “He can do nothing,” he said, “he can but turn her on to the road. And I do not think he will dare.” “Ah! Beatrice Atherton?” questioned Mary, who had a clearer view of the situation now. “Yes--Beatrice Atherton. He fears that we shall tell her. He cannot send Margaret to Overfield or Great Keynes now.” “And if he turns her out after all?” Sir James looked at her keenly. “We must leave the rest to God,” he said. The village was well awake by the time that they had finished their talk and had had something to eat. The drama at the convent had leaked out through the boy who served the altar there, and a little group was assembled opposite the windows of the cottage to which the monk had been seen to ride up an hour or two before. It seemed strange that no priest had been near them, but it was fairly evident that the terror was too great. As the four came out on to the road, a clerical cap peeped for a moment from the churchyard wall and disappeared again. They went down towards the convent along the grey road, in the pale autumn morning air. Mary still seemed to herself to walk in a dream, with her father and brother on either side masquerading in strange character; the familiar atmosphere had been swept from them, the background of association was gone, and they moved now in a new scene with new parts to play that were bringing out powers which she had never suspected in them. It seemed as if their essential souls had been laid bare by a catastrophe, and that she had never known them before.