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“But if you do pay it,” said Phoebe, earnestly, “I hope you will impress upon Luke that it is the last money you will ever give him while he stops in that house.”

“Why?” asked Lady Audley, letting her hands fall on her lap, and looking inquiringly at Mrs. Marks.

“Because I want Luke to leave the Castle.”

“But why do you want him to leave?”

“Oh, for ever so many reasons, my lady,” answered Phoebe. “He’s not fit to be the landlord of a public-house. I didn’t know that when I married him, or I would have gone against the business, and tried to persuade him to take to the farming line. Not that I suppose he’d have given up his own fancy, either; for he’s obstinate enough, as you know, my lady. He’s not fit for his present business. He’s scarcely ever sober after dark; and when he’s drunk he gets almost wild, and doesn’t seem to know what he does. We’ve had two or three narrow escapes with him already.”

“Narrow escapes!” repeated Lady Audley. “What do you mean?”

“Why, we’ve run the risk of being burnt in our beds through his carelessness.”

“Burnt in your beds through his carelessness! Why, how was that?” asked my lady, rather listlessly. She was too selfish, and too deeply absorbed in her own troubles to take much interest in any danger which had befallen her some-time lady’s-maid.

“You know what a queer old place the Castle is, my lady; all tumble-down wood-work, and rotten rafters, and such like. The Chelmsford Insurance Company won’t insure it; for they say if the place did happen to catch fire of a windy night it would blaze away like so much tinder, and nothing in the world could save it. Well, Luke knows this; and the landlord has warned him of it times and often, for he lives close against us, and he keeps a pretty sharp eye upon all my husband’s goings on; but when Luke’s tipsy he doesn’t know what he’s about, and only a week ago he left a candle burning in one of the out-houses, and the flame caught one of the rafters of the sloping roof, and if it hadn’t been for me finding it out when I went round the house the last thing, we should have all been burnt to death, perhaps. And that’s the third time the same kind of thing has happened in the six months we’ve had the place, and you can’t wonder that I’m frightened, can you, my lady?”

My lady had not wondered, she had not thought about the business at all. She had scarcely listened to these commonplace details; why should she care for this low-born waiting-woman’s perils and troubles? Had she not her own terrors, her own soul-absorbing perplexities to usurp every thought of which her brain was capable?

She did not make any remark upon that which poor Phoebe just told her; she scarcely comprehended what had been said, until some moments after the girl had finished speaking, when the words assumed their full meaning, as some words do after they have been heard without being heeded.

“Burnt in your beds,” said the young lady, at last. “It would have been a good thing for me if that precious creature, your husband, had been burnt in his bed before to-night.”

A vivid picture had flashed upon her as she spoke. The picture of that frail wooden tenement, the Castle Inn, reduced to a roofless chaos of lath and plaster, vomiting flames from its black mouth, and spitting blazing sparks upward toward the cold night sky.

She gave a weary sigh as she dismissed this image from her restless brain. She would be no better off even if this enemy should be for ever silenced. She had another and far more dangerous foe—a foe who was not to be bribed or bought off, though she had been as rich as an empress.

“I’ll give you the money to send this bailiff away,” my lady said, after a pause. “I must give you the last sovereign in my purse, but what of that? you know as well as I do that I dare not refuse you.”