This stalwart lady stumbled and groped her way back to her chair, and sat down again in the kitchen. The chair in which she sat was an old-fashioned armchair of plain wood, uncoloured and clumsy.

When Mildred Tarnley returned the changed appearance of her guest struck her.

“Be ye sick, ma’am?” she asked, standing, candle in hand, by the chair.

The visitor was sitting bolt upright, with a large hand clutched on each arm of the chair, with a face deadly pale and distorted by a frown or a spasm that frightened old Mildred, who fancied, as she made no sign, not the slightest stir, that she was in a fit, or possibly dead.

“For God’s sake, ma’am,” conjured old Mildred, fiercely, “will ye speak?”

The lady in the chair started, shrugged, and gasped. It was like shaking off a fit.

“Ho! oh, Mildred Tarnley, I was thinking—I was thinking—did you speak?”

Mildred looked at her, not knowing what to make of it. Too much laudanum—was it? or that nervous pain in her head.

“I only asked you how you were, ma’am—you looked so bad. I thought you was just going to work in a fit.”

“What an old fool! I never was better in my life—fit! I never had a fit—not I.”

“You used to have ’em sometimes, long ago, ma’am, and they came in the snap of a finger, like,” said Mildred, sturdily.

“Clear your head of those fits, for they have left me long ago. I’m well, I tell you—never was better. You’re old—you’re old, woman, and that which has made you so pious is also making you blind.”

“Well, you look a deal better now—you do,” said Mildred, who did not want to have a corpse or an epileptic suddenly on her hands, and was much relieved by the signs of returning vivacity and colour.

“Tarnley, you’ve been a faithful creature and true to me; I hope I may live to reward you,” said the lady, extending her hand vaguely towards the old servant.

“I’m true to them as gives me bread, and ever was, and that’s old Mildred Tarnley ’s truth. If she eats their bread, she’ll maintain their right, and that’s only honest—that’s reason, ma’am.”

“I have no right to cry no; I cry excellent, good, good, very good, for as you are my husband’s servant, I have all the benefit of your admirable fidelity. Boo! I am so grateful, and one day or other, old girl, I’ll reward you—and very good tea, and every care of me. I will tell Mr. Vairvield when he comes how good you have been—and, tell me, how is the fire, and the bed, and the bedroom—all quite comfortable?”

“Comfortable, quite, I hope, ma’am?”

“Do I look quite well now?”

“Yes’m, pure and hearty. It was only just a turn.”

“Yes, just so, perhaps, although I never felt it, and I could dance now only for—fifty things, so I won’t mind.” She laughed. “I’m sleepy, and I’m not sleepy; and I love you, old Mildred Tarnley, and you’ll tell me some more about Master Harry and h............