liked me, and took care of me when I was a little girl. Years
ago, when she went away from us, she wrote down in my Prayer-book
for me where she was going to live in London, and she said, 'If
you are ever in trouble, Anne, come to me. I have no husband
alive to say me nay, and no children to look after, and I will
take care of you.' Kind words, were they not? I suppose I remember
them because they were kind. It's little enough I remember
besides--little enough, little enough!"

"Had you no father or mother to take care of you?"

"Father?--I never saw him--I never heard mother speak of him.
Father? Ah, dear! he is dead, I suppose."

"And your mother?"

"I don't get on well with her. We are a trouble and a fear to
each other."

A trouble and a fear to each other! At those words the suspicion
crossed my mind, for the first time, that her mother might be the
person who had placed her under restraint.

"Don't ask me about mother," she went on. "I'd rather talk of
Mrs. Clements. Mrs. Clements is like you, she doesn't think that
I ought to be back in the Asylum, and she is as glad as you are
that I escaped from it. She cried over my misfortune, and said it
must be kept secret from everybody."

Her "misfortune." In what sense was she using that word? In a