"'Mary,' I whispered, surprised and somewhat annoyed at my sister's calmness, 'are you going to let her go away? You and I _can't_ stay here all night alone.'
"'Do you mean that you are frightened, Laura dear?' she said kindly, in the same tone. 'I don't see that there is anything to be frightened of; and if there were, what good would another girl--for this young woman is very little older than I--do us?'
"'She knows the house, any way, and it wouldn't seem so bad,' I replied, adding aloud, 'Oh, Mrs. Atkins'--for I had heard the driver mention her name--'can't you stay in the house with us? We shall feel so dreadfully strange.'
"'I would have done so most gladly, Miss,' the young woman began, but Mary interrupted her.
"'I know you can't,' she said; 'your husband is ill. Laura, it would be very wrong of us to propose such a thing.'
"'That's just how it is,' said Mrs. Atkins. 'My husband has such bad nights he can't be left, and there's no one I could get to sit with him. Besides, it's such a dreadful night to seek for any one.'
"'Then the driver,' I said; 'couldn't he stay somewhere downstairs? He might have a fire in one of the rooms.'
"Mrs. Atkins wished it had been thought of before. 'Giles,'--which it appeared was the man's name--would have done it in a minute, she was sure, but it was too late. He had already set off to seek a night's lodging and some supper, no doubt, at a little inn half a mile down the road.
"'An inn?' I cried. 'I wish we had gone there too. It would have been far better than staying here.'
"'Oh, it's a very poor place--'The Drover's Rest,' they call it. It would never do for you, Miss,' said Mrs. Atkins, looking distressed that all her efforts for our comfort appeared to have been in vain. 'Giles might ha' thought of it himself,' she added, 'but then you see it would never strike him but what here--in the Grange--you'd be as safe as safe. It's not a place for burglaries and such like, hereabouts.'
"'And of course we shall be quite safe,' said Mary. 'Laura dear, what has made you so nervous all of a sudden?'
"I did not answer, for I was ashamed to speak of Mrs. Atkins' story of the strange noises she had heard the previous night, which evidently Mary had forgotten, but I followed the young woman with great eagerness, to see that we were at least thoroughly well defended by locks and bolts in our solitude. The tapestry room and that in which we were to sleep could be locked off from the rest of the empty house, as a door stood at the head of the little stair leading up to them--so far, so well. But Mrs. Atkins proceeded to explain that the door at the _outside_ end of the other passage, leading into the garden, could not be locked except from the outside.