all these years. I know you always hated me, but you might have had
some pity. All my life I shall bear the marks on my soul of the bitter
tyranny I have endured here. Now I am going away out into the world,
and God knows what will become of me."

She folded, enveloped, and addressed the note, stuck a long hat-pin
fiercely through it, and left it, patent, speared to her pin-cushion,
with her step-father's name uppermost.

"Good-bye, little room," she said. "I feel I shall never see you
again."

Slowly and sadly she crossed the room and turned the handle of the
door. The door was locked.

Once, years ago, a happier man than the Reverend Cecil had been Rector
of Long Barton. And in the room that now was Betty's he had had iron
bars fixed to the two windows, because that room was the nursery.

* * * * *

That evening, after dinner, Mr. Vernon sat at his parlour window
looking idly along the wet bowling-green to the belt of lilacs and the
pale gleams of watery sunset behind them. He had passed a disquieting
day. He hated to leave things unfinished. And now the idyll was ruined
and the picture threatened,--and Betty's portrait was not finished,
and never would be.

"Come in," he said; and his landlady heavily followed up her tap on
his door.