I ... I cannot bear it....
Topcliffe comes to see me every day.... He ... he speaks to me
continually of--O Christ! Christ! I cannot bear it!"
He dropped suddenly on to his knees by the table and hid his face.
III
At Babington House Marjorie slept, as was often the custom, in the same
room with her maid--a large, low room, hung all round with painted
cloths above the low wainscoting.
On the night after the visit to the prison, Janet noticed that her
mistress was restless; and that while she would say nothing of what was
troubling her, and only bade her go to bed and to sleep, she herself
would not go to bed. At last, in sheer weariness, the maid slept.
She awakened later, at what time she did not know, and, in her
uneasiness, sat up and looked about her; and there, still before the
crucifix, where she had seen her before she slept, kneeled her mistress.
She cried out in a loud whisper:
"Come to bed, mistress; come to bed."
And, at the word, Marjorie started; then she rose, turned, and in the
twilight of the summer night began to prepare herself for bed, without
speaking. Far away across the roofs of Derby came the crowing of a cock
to greet the dawn.
CHAPTER X
I
It was a fortnight later that there came suddenly to Babington House old
Mr. Biddell himself. Up to the present he had been careful not to do so.
He appeared in the great hall an hour before dinner-time, as the tables
were being set, and sent a servant for Mistress Manners.
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