body felt! So light, so fragile, and yet how full of life! "Thank you! Thank you!" she breathed, and he laughed as he felt the warmth of her mouth against his ear. He wrapped himself about her.
"Child," admonished his aunt, "don't be so rough with Alayne! She is coming to my room now. She is tired. You're dragging her down."
Renny removed the little limpet, and Lady Buckley took Alayne by the arm.
As they mounted the stairs, she said: "You have done nobly and rightly. I cannot express how I admire you for it. I wish I could say that I am sure you will be rewarded for your self-sacrifice, but I have not found it so in life." And she sighed. "I have discovered a nice young Scotch girl who will come from the village every day to work for you at—you know where. I refuse to call the cottage by that odious name, even though Renny be disagreeable to me."
They sought Augusta's room, and she poured water from the heavy ewer into the basin, that Alayne might wash her face and hands.
Finch, too, had gone to his room. The creak of the attic stairs, as he ascended, was to him the voice of the house. It welcomed him, and chided him. The attic complained that it had been so long deserted by him. No one there, all those weeks, to listen to the voice of the house at night. All that he might have heard it say on those nights was now lost to him for ever. The walls of his room did not seem to be standing still. They seemed to move, to quiver in consciousness of him. The faded flowers of the wallpaper stirred as in a gust. He stood there, snuffing the familiar smells: the plaster, damp in one spot where the roof leaked—there was his water basin just where he had left it, placed to catch the drops; the faded carpet, not swept too thoroughly by Mrs. Wragge—it had a peculiar, fuzzy smell; the mustiness of the old books in the cupboard; and, permeating all, the essence of the house itself, which held a secret never to be told, though he thought he came near to guessing it.
He threw open the window and let in the air. The
