"Cooper is a reliable man; I don't believe the poor fellow would tell a lie to save himself from hanging; and Colonel West is of known honour; both of them assert that the lights were green." "I swear that the light exhibited and swung about was _red_," retorted Oliver Jupp. "There; let it drop. Are you and Mrs. Lake coming home to-night?" "No. It was uncertain what time I might reach Guild after the inquest, and Mrs. Chester seized upon it as a plea for urging us to remain another night. She wants us to stay for the week, but I don't think we shall. Clara seems rather averse to it." They parted at the station. Oliver Jupp taking the train for Katterley: and with him we have nothing more to do at present. Mr. Lake got into the train for Guild. Upon arriving at Mrs. Chester's he found the house empty. Going from room to room in search of them, he at length came upon Anna Chester, mending socks and pinafores. "Where are they all?" "I think they have gone to see the late rose show," she said; "there's one in the town today." He stood by while she folded some pinafores she had finished. Her hands were quick; her sweet face was full of patient gentleness. "It is not the right thing for you, Anna." "It is pleasant work. I have been obliged to be useful all my life, you know." "I don't mean that. Why should you be left at home, while they all go to a flower-show?" A bloom, bright as any rose in the famous show, shone in the girl's cheeks. She loved flowers, and looked up with a happy expression. "Perhaps time will be found for me to go tomorrow; mamma said so. It will be only sixpence then." "And today it's a shilling, I suppose?" "Yes." Mr. Lake nodded his head once or twice in a rather marked manner, but did not give utterance to his thoughts, whatever they might be. Anna resumed. "I do all the work I can--of sewing and other kinds. It has cost mamma so much to get into this house, with the new things she has been obliged to buy, that she says she is nearly ruined. With Lady Ellis here, and only two servants, we could not get along at all but for my looking to everything." Mr. Lake went off muttering something about Penelope's selfishness. That Anna was put upon quite like another Cinderella he had long known, and his sense of fairness rose up against it. "If the girl was a tyrant she'd not have stood it for a day," he cried, as he flung himself down on a bench and raked the gravel with his cane. "A meek temper is a misfortune." A short while, and he heard the keys of the piano touched in the drawing-room; a soft, sweet, musical voice broke out gently in song. He knew it for Anna's. She had finished her work, and was snatching a moment for music, having come in to get the table ready for tea. The open piano tempted her. Mr. Lake listened through the song--an old one; and put his head in at the window as she was rising. "Sing another for me, Anna."