"Ma'am," answered Hatch, "I think that if you'll go back with me, and knock at her room door, and call out that you be come to pay her a visit, she'd undo it. She's more afeared of you than of anybody living. She can't have done herself much harm yet, and you might coax her out for a walk or a drive, and then bring her in to dinner here--anything to get her away from them two dangerous bottles. If I be making too free, ma'am, you'll be good enough to excuse me--it is for the family's sake. At home I can manage her pretty well, but to have a scene at the hotel would make it public." "What is to be the ending?" I exclaimed involuntarily as Miss Brightman went in haste for her bonnet. "Why, the ending must be--just what it will be," observed Hatch philosophically. "But, Mr. Charles, I don't despair of her yet. Begging your pardon, Miss Annabel, you'd better not come. Your mamma won't undo her door if she thinks there's many round it." Annabel stood at the window as they departed, her face turned from me, her eyes blinded with tears. I drew her away, though I hardly knew how to soothe her. It was a heavy grief to bear. "My days are passed in dread of what tidings may be on the way to me," she began, after a little time given to gathering composure. "I ought to be nearer my mother, Charles; I tell Aunt Lucy so almost every day. She might be ill and dead before I could get to her, up in London." "And you will be nearer to her shortly, Annabel. My dear, where shall our home be? I was thinking of Richmond----" "No, no," she interrupted in sufficient haste to show me she had thoughts of her own. "Annabel! It shall not be _there_: at your mother's. Anywhere else." "It is somewhere else that I want to be." "Then you shall be. Where is it?" She lifted her face like a pleading child's, and spoke in a whisper. "Charles, let me come to you in Essex Street." "_Essex Street!_" I echoed in surprise. "My dear Annabel, I will certainly not bring you to Essex Street and its inconveniences. I cannot do great things for you yet, but I can do better than that." "They would not be inconveniences to me. I would turn them into pleasures. We would take another servant to help Watts and Leah; or two if necessary. You would not find me the least encumbrance; I would never be in the way of your professional rooms. And in the evening, when you had finished for the day, we would dine, and go down to mamma's for an hour, and then back again. Charles, it would be a happy home: let me come to it." But I shook my head. I did not see how it could be arranged; and said so. "No, because at present the idea is new to you," returned Annabel. "_Think it over_, Charles. Promise me that you will do so." "Yes, my dear; I can at least promise you that."