Ferdy chuckled. "I've been--S'v'y H'l--B't'fly pretty girl--j'lly ev'ning--such fun--it's--it's--" Here he missed one step and rolled down two, with an idiotic giggle. Clarice would have struck him in her disgust, but that would have done no good. Being a prompt and powerful young woman, she caught him by the collar of his coat and dragged him into his bedroom on the first floor. There she locked him in, while Ferdy protested weakly all the time, and only yielded to superior force. "Faugh!" said Clarice, throwing the key on her dressing-table. "What a weak fool he is." She sat down and stared at the reflection of her face in the Louis Quinze mirror. It looked weary and drawn. "I shall be an old woman soon if this sort of thing goes on," she thought. "Oh, dear me, how tired I am of bearing other people's burdens. I must end it. In some way, I'll get the truth out of Uncle Henry, settle the money matters, marry Anthony, and wash my hands of everything. As to Ferdy, I'll marry him to Prudence and let her look after him." Having thus arranged the future, she retired to rest. But not to sleep, since her brain was much too active for slumber. She tossed and turned and sighed wearily at intervals, as the hours dragged on to midnight. Only on hearing the church clock strike twelve did she begin to lose consciousness, and, finally, thankfully sank into a deep slumber, which lasted for hours. Towards dawn, as is often the case with worried people, she began to dream in a confused, broken way, and the purple fern, very naturally, since it was in her mind, mingled with her fleeting visions. She fled--so it seemed--through dark streets, of nightmare length, pursued by the man in grey, who assumed monstrous proportions. He caught her, at the end of interminable miles, and--so she dreamed, with gasping horror--stabbed her to the heart. Then she felt the mark of the Purple Fern--the mark, indeed, of the Beast, as it might be--stamped on her forehead. Afterwards, half awake and half asleep--only in her dream she was dead--she felt herself being placed in a narrow coffin, and heard the hammering of the nails, which closed her in for ever and ever and ever. With a violent effort she broke the nightmare's bonds, and woke in a cold perspiration, to see the cold, faint dawn glimmering behind the window blinds, and--horrible feeling--to hear the knocking continue. But not on her dream coffin. The blows came on her bedroom door, steady, persistent, terrifying. She heard her name called in a quavering voice, and sprang out of bed, confused and dazed. Wrapping a dressing-gown round her and somewhat recovering her senses, she hastily unlocked the door, which she invariably kept closed during the hours of sleep. On the threshold stood Chalks, white and shaking, with chattering teeth and trembling hands.