“Why, you pert little baggage!” she muttered, then she made a dart toward the girl and clutched her arm with fingers that seemed strong as iron. Molly struggled wildly to get away, but Mrs. Barry held her tightly. “Come here, Ginny Ann, and help me!” she called to the gaping old negress, and between them they dragged the girl upstairs, where Mrs. Barry deliberately pushed her into the big garret and locked the door. “Stay there, miss, until you come to your senses and ask my pardon for your impertinence!” she screamed through the key-hole. Then Molly heard the departing footsteps of the grim old lady and her satellite, and realized that she was locked up like a naughty child in punishment for her misdemeanor. She was in doubt whether to laugh or cry at the preposterousness of the whole thing. At first she indulged in a burst of defiant laughter which soon changed to hysterical sobbing. Sinking down on an old moth-eaten sofa she covered her face with her hands, and tears rained through her fingers. “Oh, mamma, my true, gifted, beautiful mamma, it was bitter to hear you maligned so, and you in your tragic grave!” she murmured sadly. “And I, your own daughter, I could not take your part because of the promise that bound me to keep Louise’s secret. How can I ever like that proud old woman again?” Like a grieved child she sobbed herself to sleep in the musty, close-smelling garret, where quiet reigned supreme save for the patter of startled mice across the bare, dusty floor. Two hours passed, and Ginny Ann, the black woman, was sent up to inquire regarding the state of mind of the imprisoned culprit. “Ole missis wants to know is you sorry fo’ youse sassiness yet?” she bawled through the key-hole. There was no reply, and she went down and reported that Miss Louise was sulking yet, and wouldn’t answer a word. “Let her stay until night, then. I guess the darkness will cure her of her stubbornness,” chuckled Mrs. Barry, evilly. But all the same she had sent Agnes Walker, her maid, back to Lewisburg with old Abe, with instructions to buy the summer silk and a white muslin besides. The old lady had very particular reasons for wanting her niece to have this finery. And while the prisoner sobbed herself to sleep in the garret, and Agnes Walker tumbled over silks and muslins in Lewisburg, Mrs. Barry had Ginny Ann unpacking trunks in the dressing-room and hauling out finery that had not seen the light for years, but which in the revolutions of fashion’s wheel was as fashionable now as in the long ago years when Mrs. Barry had bedecked her form in the costliest fabrics and richest laces to grace the grand society in which she moved before she had settled down, a childless widow, at lonely Ferndale, her dower house, to nurse her grief for her lost partner and her chronic dyspepsia together and to make herself a terror to any one who dared dispute her despotic will.