For answer, Miss Meta shook out her golden curls, laughed triumphantly, and started off to the passages then and there. Maria had never said to her, "You must not go near those passages;" and the commands of the rest of the world went for nothing. Margery remained in blissful ignorance of the disobedience. She supposed the child had run to her mother and the Miss Godolphins. The objection to Meta's being in the passages alone had no mysterious element in it. It proceeded solely from a regard to her personal safety. The staircase leading to the turret was unprotected; the loopholes in the turret were open, and a fall from either might cost the young lady her life. These places, the unfrequented passages at the back of the second storey, and the staircase leading to the square turret above them, were shut in by a door, which separated them from the inhabited part of the house. This door Miss Meta had learned to open; and away she went, as fancy led her. Maria was in Miss Godolphin's room, talking to that lady and to Bessy, when a sound overhead caused them to pause. "Where's Meta?" cried Janet, hastening from the room. "She cannot have gone upstairs again! Margery! Where's the child?" Margery at that moment happened to be putting the finishing touches to her own toilette. She came flying without her cap out of one of the many narrow passages and windings which intersected each other on that floor. "The child went off to you, ma'am, as soon as I had put on her pinafore." "Then, Margery, she has gone up into the turret. She never came to us." Up to the turret hastened Janet; up to the turret followed Margery. Bessy and Maria traversed the passage leading to the turret-stairs, and stood there, looking upwards. Maria, had she been alone, could not have told which of the passages _would_ lead her to the turret-stairs; and she could not understand why so much commotion need be made, although Meta had run up there. Strange as it may seem, Maria Godolphin, though so many years George's wife, and the presumptive mistress of Ashlydyat, had never passed beyond that separating door. Miss Godolphin had never offered to take her to the unused rooms and the turret; and Maria was of too sensitively refined a nature to ask it of her own accord. Janet appeared, leading the rebel; Margery, behind, was scolding volubly. "Now," said Janet, when they reached the foot, "tell me, Meta, how it was that you could behave so disobediently, and go where you had been expressly told not to go?" Meta shook back her golden curls with a laugh, sprang to Maria, and took refuge in her skirts. "Mamma did not tell me not to go," said she. Janet looked at Maria: almost as if she would say, Can it be true that you have not done so? "It is true," said Maria, answering the look. "I heard something about her running into the turret the last time she was here: I did not know it was of any consequence."