Lottie freed herself from him violently, and fled. Even in the dark there were things that Law could not be permitted to say, or she to hear. CHAPTER XXIX. THE HEAVINGS OF THE EARTHQUAKE. The next morning dawned very strangely on all the members of the little household. Lottie was down early, as she generally was; but the advantages of early rising were neutralised by the condition of the little maid, Mary, who was too much excited to do her work, and kept continually coming back to pour her doubts and her difficulties into Lottie’s ear. “I can’t get no rest till I’ve told mother,” Mary said. “If there’s anything wrong, mother won’t let me stay, not a day. And even if there’s nothing wrong, I don’t know as I’ll stay. I haven’t got no fault to find with you, Miss; nor the Captain, nor even Mr. Law: though he’s a dreadful bother with his boots cleaning; but to say as you’re beginning as you mean to end, and then to give all that trouble! every blessed thing, I had to drag it upstairs. Mr. Law was very kind; he took up the big box--I couldn’t ha’ done it; but up and down, up and down, all the little boxes and the bags, and the brown paper parcels--‘It saves trouble if you begins as you means to end,’ she says----” “I don’t want to hear what Mrs. Despard says,” said Lottie. Mrs. Despard: it was her mother’s name. And though that mother had not been an ideal mother, or one of those who are worshipped in their children’s memories, it is wonderful, what a gush of tender recollections came into Lottie’s mind with the name. Poor mamma! she had been very kind in her way, always ready to indulge and to pardon, if indifferent to what happened in more important matters. She had never exacted anything, never worried her children about idleness or untidiness, or any of those minor sins which generally make a small girl’s life a burden to her. Lottie’s mind went back to her, lying on her sofa, languid, perhaps lazy--badly dressed; yet never anything but a lady, with a kind of graciousness in her faded smile, and grace in her faded gown. Not a woman to be held in adoration, and yet--the girl sighed, but set to work to make the little brown dining-room neat, to get the table set, making up for Mary’s distracted service by her own extra activity. For amid all the horrors of last night there was one which had cut Lottie very deeply, and that was the many references to the cold beef, and the bride’s dislike of “cold victuals.” It is inconceivable, among all the more important matters involved, how deeply wounded Lottie’s pride had been by this reproach. She resolved that no one should be able to speak so to-day; and she herself put on her hat and went out to the shop on the Abbey Hill almost as soon as it had opened, that this intolerable reproach should not be in the interloper’s power. She met more than one of the old Chevaliers as she came up, for most of them kept early hours and paced the terrace pavement in the morning as if it had been morning