She brushed the crumbs from the long table, and smoothed the cloth for the next morning's breakfast; she put away bottles and dishes, and she locked up cupboards, and saw that the windows and the doors were fastened.

Then she went down to her books in the little office below stairs.

In the performance of her daily duty there were entries to be made and figures to be adjusted, which would have been done in the course of the evening, had it not been that she had been driven upstairs by fear of her lover and her uncle.

But by the time that she took herself up to bed, nothing had been omitted.

And after the book was closed she sat there, trying to resolve what she would do.