"Drat the girl!" she said to herself impatiently; "why don't she come out of the garden? Now I am feeling--what with nursing and grief--a touch of my old enemy the rheumatics, and I'll have to go out in the damp and cold calling to her. But there, there! I mustn't think of myself; _he_ never did, bless him!" The old woman wrapped a shawl about her head and shoulders, and opening the kitchen door, she passed through the yard into the beautiful garden. It was a moonlight night, and she could see across the lawns and over the flower-beds. The place looked ghostly and still and white, for there was a slight hoar-frost and the air was crisp and very chill. "Annie, Annie, Annie!" called Mrs Shelf. "Come in, my dear; come in, my love. Your supper is waiting for you." No answer of any sort. Mrs Shelf went down the broad centre path and called again, "Annie, Annie, Annie!" But now echo took up her words, and "Annie, Annie, Annie!" came mockingly back on her ears. She felt a sudden sense of fright, and a swift and certain knowledge that Annie was not in the garden. She went back to the house, chilled to the bone and thoroughly frightened. As she did so she remembered John Saxon's words, that she was to take very great and special care of Annie. Oh, how mad she had been to leave her alone for two hours and a half! And how queer and persistent of Annie to send her away! What did it mean? Did it mean anything or nothing at all? "Oh God, help me!" thought the poor old woman. She sat down in a corner of the warm kitchen, clasping her hands on her knees and looking straight before her. Where was Annie? On the kitchen table she had laid a pile of the little things which she had bought at Rashleigh by Annie's direction. Mechanically she remembered that she had supplied herself with some spools of cotton. She drew her work-box towards her, and opening it, prepared to drop them in. Lying just over a neatly folded piece of cambric which the old woman had been embroidering lay Annie's note. Mrs Shelf took it up, staggered towards the lamp, and read it. She read it once; she read it twice. She was alone in the house--absolutely alone--and no one knew, and--brave old lady--she never told any one to her dying day that after reading that note she had fainted dead away, and had lain motionless for a long time on the floor of the kitchen-- that kitchen which Annie's light footfall, as she firmly believed, would never enter again. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. A DEFENDER.