bottle about.”

“Why—does she drink?”

Stephen only laughed in reply.

“Look here, you’d better clear out,” he advised, “before Miss Warren raises hell. This is the bachelor’s room.”

“But I’m not a lady. I’m Staff,” explained Helen indig nantly. “And they’re waiting tea for you.”

“You mean, Simone is waiting. Old Newton is wolfing down the tea-cake.” Stephen pulled on his coat. “I’ll take the pup down with me. Introduce him to the family, and make us two to one, in the muffin handicap.”

“Surely you don’t call that large thing a pup,” cried Helen, as the Alsatian followed his master into the bathroom.

“He’s quite young, really.” Stephen’s voice was positively tender. “I love dogs-and hate women. Reason. Remind me to tell you the story of my life.”

Helen felt slightly forlorn when his whistle died away in the distance. She knew she would miss the pupil. But a second glance around the untidy room reminded her that his absence would mean less work, so she resolved to leave all regret to Simone.

Her tea was calling her downstairs to the kitchen. Not stopping to clear away any litter, she hurried to her own room, and took off her coat, and shoes. As the order for closed shutters only included the basement, ground-floor and first-floor, her own casement banged open to the wind.

In spite of her haste, she could not resist the luxury of lingering there, looking out over the valley, just to enjoy the sense of contrast. She could see only a spongy blackness. It seemed to stir and creep before the breath of the breeze. Not a gleam shone from any window of the sparsely sprinkled cottages.

“I wonder where I stood, looking across at the Summit,” she wondered. “It seemed such a. long way off, then. And now, I’m inside, safe.”.

She was visited by no prescience to warn her that—since her return—there had been certain trivial incidents which were the first cracks in the walls of her fortress. Once they were started, nothing could stop the process’ of disintegration; and each future development would act as a wedge, to force the fissures into ever-widening breaches, letting in the night.

CHAPTER III

A FIRESIDE STORY

 

Helen went down to the kitchen, by the back way-a spiral of steep steps, broken up into flights at each floor, by a small landing, where a door connected it with the main staircase. It was covered with the original linoleum–brown-and-biscuit, and small—patterned-like an old-fashioned tile, but still in excellent condition.

To Helen, this dingy back way down represented the essence of romance. It was a delicate filament connecting her with the glamor of the past, and revived memories of spacious and leisured days.

She had been brought up in a tiny mansion-flat, with no room to keep a maid, a hat-box, or a cat. The perambulator was housed in the bathroom, and the larder was thoughtfully built in the only spare recess, which happened to be next to the stove.

When Helen reached the basement-hall, she could hear the welcome rattle of china and see the glow of the kitchen fire through the frosted glass panels of the door. Mrs. Oates was drinking tea from her saucer as she made herself another piece of toast.”

She was a tall, strapping woman, broad-shouldered and muscular, with an ugly, underhung face. She did not wear uniform, and her afternoon skirt was protected by an apron of red and black Welsh flannel.

“I heard you running down all them steep steps,” she said. “You’re free to use the front.”

“Yes I know” replied Helen. “But back-stairs remind me of my granny’s house. The servants and the children were never allowed to go up the front way, because of wearing out the carpet.”.

“Go on,” remarked Mrs.