"Oh, dear!--oh, dear! what shall I do?--what shall I do?" sobbed Jane Barker. "What a wicked set we must all be for the troubles to come bubbling and rolling over us like this in a great water-flood. There's poor Sir Murray half-mad with grief, shutting himself up in his library, and never hardly so much as eating or drinking a bit. There's my own dear, sweet lady lying there day after day, with the lids shut down over those poor soft eyes of hers, never moving, and nobody knowing whether she's living or dead, only when she gives one of those little sobbing sighs. And then there's the poor old Rector, coming every day over and over again to see how she is, and looking as if his heart would break; and poor Mrs Elstree wandering up and down the passages like a ghost. Oh, dear!--oh, dear!--oh, dear! the place isn't like the same, and I don't know what's to become of us all. One didn't need to have jewels missing, and poor servants suspected of taking them, and sent away without a month's warning, and not a bit of character. But oh, John!-- John!--John! it wasn't a month's warning you had, but many months' warning; and it wasn't you stole the cross, but let something steal away all your good heart and good looks too." Here Jane Barker burst out into a passionate fit of weeping, sobbing as though her heart would break. She was sitting by her open window--one looking over a part of the shrubbery which concealed the servants' offices from the view of those who strolled through the grounds. It was not the first night by many that Jane had sat there bewailing her troubles, for it had become a favourite custom with her to sit there, thoughtful and silent, till her passionate grief brought forth some such outburst as the above. Busy the whole day at her work about the sick-chamber of her lady, Jane told herself that at such times there was something else for her to do beside sorrowing; but when at midnight all about was wrapped in silence, the poor girl would sit or kneel at her window, mourning and crying for hour after hour.