chairs ranged with their backs to the walls. He motioned her to be
seated.

"You shall be told as soon as ever your aunt arrives."

"Yes, sir," said Tilda feebly. For the moment all the fight had gone
out of her.

He stood eyeing her, pulling at his bony finger-joints, and seemed on
the point of putting some further question, but turned abruptly and left
the room.

As the door closed--thank Heaven, at least, he did not bolt this one
also!--a dry sob escaped the child. Why had she told that string of
falsehoods? She was trapped now--imprisoned in this horrible house, not
to be released until this fictitious aunt arrived, which, of course,
would be never. The book on her lap lay open at a coloured lithograph
of Mazeppa bound upon his steed and in full flight across the Tartar
steppes. She knew the story--was it not Mr. Maggs's most thrilling
"equestrian _finale_," and first favourite with the public? At another
time she would have examined the picture eagerly. But now it swam
before her, unmeaning. She closed the book, threw a glance around the
four corners of the room, another at the stuffed kestrel--whose pitiless
small eye strangely resembled Doctor Glasson's--and dragged herself to
the window.

The lower panes of the window were filled with coloured transparencies
representing in series the history of the Prodigal Son. They excluded a
great deal of daylight and the whole of the view. Even by standing on
tip-toe she could not look over them, and she dared not try to raise the