Saying to myself that vows, as empty of heart as mine, were void before God and man, I sat down and wrote a few words to the man whose step on the stair I dreaded above everything else in the world; and, leaving the note on the table, unlocked my door and looked out.

The hall connecting with my room was empty, but not so the lower one.

There I could hear voices and laughter, Mr.Brainard's loud above all the rest,--a fatal sound to me, cutting off all escape in that direction.

But another way offered and that one near at hand.

Communicating with the very hall in which I stood was an outside staircase running down to the road--a means of entering and leaving a house which I never see now wherever I may encounter it, without a gush of inward shame and terror, so instinctive and so sharp that I have never been able to hide it from any one whose eye might chance to be upon me at the moment.