She watched for the first sound of the tempest, and Emmy and the servants watched her, the one with sympathy and terror, the others with keen curiosity not unheightened by expectation. She was a good mistress, and some of them were fond of her; some of them were capable of standing by her through good and evil; but it is not in human nature not to watch with excitement the bursting of such a cloud, or to look on without a certain keen pleasure in seeing how a victim--a heroine--will comport herself in the moment of danger. It was to them as good as a play. There were some in her own house who did not believe it; there were some who had long, they said, been suspicious; but all, both those who believed it and those who did not believe it, were keen to see how she would comport herself in this terrible crisis of fate. The days went by very slowly in this extraordinary tension of spirit; the first stroke came as such a stroke generally does--from a wholly unexpected quarter. Mrs. Blencarrow was sitting one afternoon with Emmy in the drawing-room. The large room looked larger with only these two in it. Emmy, a little figure only half visible, lay in a great chair near the fire, buried in it, her small face showing like a point of whiteness amid the ruddy tones of the firelight and the crimson of the chair. Her mother was on the other side of the fire, with a screen thrown between her and the glow, scarcely betraying her existence at all, in the shade in which she sat, by any movement. The folds of her velvet dress caught the firelight and showed a little colour lying coiled about her feet; but this was all that a spectator would have seen. Emmy was busy with some fleecy white knitting, which she could go on with in the partial darkness; the faint sound of her knitting-pins was audible along with the occasional puff of flame from the fire, or falling of ashes on the hearth. There was not much conversation between them. Sometimes Emmy would ask a question: ‘When are the boys coming home, mamma?’ ‘Perhaps to-day,’ with a faint movement in the darkness; ‘but they are going back to school on Monday,’ Mrs. Blencarrow said, with a tone of relief. It might have been imagined that she said ‘Thank Heaven!’ under her breath. Emmy felt the meaning of that tone as she felt everything, but blamed herself for thinking so, as if she were doing wrong. ‘It is a strange thing to say,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow; ‘but I almost wish they were going straight back to school, without coming home again.’ ‘Oh, mamma!’ said Emmy, with a natural protest. ‘It seems a strange thing,’ said Mrs. Blencarrow, ‘to say----’ She had paused between these two last words, and there was a slight quiver in her voice. She had paused to listen; there was some sound in the clear air, which was once more hard with frost; it was the sound of a carriage coming up the avenue. All was so still around the house that they could hear it for a long way. Mrs. Blencarrow drew a long, shivering breath.