A minute or two passed, yet she heard and saw nothing.
Then she quickly descended the stairs.

The door of the sitting-room was open; the room was vacant.
"Lilian!" she called aloud, involuntarily.
She sprang to the front door and looked about in the little garden.
Some one moving behind caused her to turn round; it was the servant.
"Annie, has Mrs.Quarrier left the house ?" "Yes, m'm, she has.

I just had the kitchen door open, and I saw her go out--without anything on her head." "Where can she be, then?
The gate hasn't been opened; I should have heard it." One other way there was out of the garden.

By passing along a side of the cottage, one came into the back-yard, and thence, by a gate, into one of the fields which spread towards Bale Water.

Mrs.Wade remembered that Lilian had discovered this exit one day not long ago.
"I don't understand it," she continued, hurriedly.