Perhaps the last few words of this conversation were not the best preparation possible for sleep. I know I awoke a great many times during that long dark night, and once in its deepest darkness and stillness I fancied I heard a groan faintly sounding through the wall. Miss Mortimer’s rooms were near ours. This sound set all my imagination busy again. It was she who groaned under that veil of night. She, so dreadfully on her guard all day long, who relieved her miserable heart thus when nobody watched her. It was impossible not to feel excited in the neighbourhood of such mysterious secrecy. The sound of that groan moved me to pity;--she had not escaped without retribution. Was not that dread of the consequences under which she was suffering, worse than the very hardest shape the consequences were likely to assume, if they themselves ever overtook the sinner? CHAPTER IX. The next day began much like the previous day; it was still showery and damp; and though Harry was out of doors I was prevented, by Aunt Milly’s care, from joining him. In the afternoon we were to go out with her on a round of inspection to see the neighbourhood, Miss Mortimer having volunteered to give up the carriage to us for that purpose, though it was the day on which she generally took her drive; and the rector and some other near neighbours were to come to dinner in the evening. I was once more alone with Miss Mortimer. We sat much as we had done on the previous day, opposite each other, the moments passing over us in a certain excited silence. She did not say anything to me; she did not even look at me. She showed none of that voiceless anxiety to know who had come in when the door opened, which struck me before. She was much calmed down; the person she expected had come; the blow, whatever it was, had been borne; and for the present moment there was an end of it. She actually knitted her pattern correctly, and counted her stitches, and referred to her book to see if she was correct, as she sat there before me in her inhuman calm. Was she a creature of flesh and blood, after all? or a witch, like those of the old stories, without any human motives in her heart of stone?