despair.

It almost put her out of patience to see Mrs. Openshaw come in, calmly
smiling, handsomely dressed, happy, easy, to inquire after her children.

"Did Ailsie go to sleep comfortably?" she whispered to Norah.

"Yes."

Her mother bent over her, looking at her slumbers with the soft eyes of
love. How little she dreamed who had looked on her last! Then she went
to Edwin, with perhaps less wistful anxiety in her countenance, but more
of pride. She took off her things, to go down to supper. Norah saw her
no more that night.

Beside the door into the passage, the sleeping-nursery opened out of Mr.
and Mrs. Openshaw's room, in order that they might have the children more
immediately under their own eyes. Early the next summer morning Mrs.
Openshaw was awakened by Ailsie's startled call of "Mother! mother!" She
sprang up, put on her dressing-gown, and went to her child. Ailsie was
only half awake, and in a not uncommon state of terror.

"Who was he, mother? Tell me!"

"Who, my darling? No one is here. You have been dreaming love. Waken
up quite. See, it is broad daylight."

"Yes," said Ailsie, looking round her; then clinging to her mother, said,
"but a man was here in the night, mother."