“Will you come tomorrow? I am alone and cannot ask anybody to help me because of the smallpox. And I shall need some help for the funeral. You do not think me troublesome?”

“Not in the least. It is all part of my business. I will manage it for you.”

“Come then, I will show you the way out. This is No. 18, Addison Square. You need not come in the cellar way next time.”

“If I were you,” said Christopher, stopping at the foot of the kitchen stair, “I would leave the key in that cellar door. The poor young woman would be terrified to find they were prisoners.”

She turned immediately and went back. He followed and replaced the key.

“Now let us fasten up that door I came in by,” said Christopher.

This was soon done, and he left.

What a strange night it had been for Hester! For the time she had forgotten her own troubles! Ah, if she had been of one mind with lord Gartley, where would those poor creatures be now? Woe for the wife whose husband has no regard to her deepest desires, her highest aspirations!—who loves her so that he would be the god of her idolatry, not the friend and helper of her heart, soul, and mind! Many of Hester’s own thoughts were revealed to her that night by the side of the dead child. It became clear to her that she had been led astray, in part by the desire to rescue one to whom God had not sent her, in part by the pleasure of being loved, and in part by worldly ambition.

Marriage might be the absorbing duty of some women, but was it necessarily hers? Certainly not with such a man. Might not the duties of some callings be incompatible with marriage? Did not the providence of the world ordain that not a few should go unmarried? Was a husband to take the place of Christ and order her life for her? Was man enough for woman? Did she not need God? It came to that! Was he or God to be her master? It grew clearer and clearer. There was, there could be, no relation of life over which the Lord was not supreme!

When the morning came and she heard Sarah stirring, she sent her to take her place, and went to get a little rest.

—Thirty-Four —

The Attic Room

But Hester could not sleep. She rose, went back to the room where Moxy lay, and sent Sarah to get breakfast ready. An urgent desire came upon her to know the people who had come, like swallows, to tenant in the space overhead. She opened the door through which the doctor had come when she first saw him the night before, and stole gently up the stair—steep, narrow, and straight—which ran the height of the two rooms between the walls. A long way up she came to another door and, peeping through a chink in it, saw that it opened to the small orchestra high in the end-wall of the great room. Probably, at one time, the stair had been an arrangement for the musicians.