Delilah had been descending for so long when she reached the bottom of the ladder that she had almost forgotten what she was doing, repeating the same numbing motion of hand under hand and foot under foot, so it was a shock to suddenly feel a squelch that told her she had reached a damp but solid surface. She took her wand out of her mouth with relief, stretching out her aching jaw, and shone its light around, to find that she was in a long, dark tunnel with dripping walls, that stretched in both directions. She pointed her wand left and right, but the tunnel yawned into darkness both ways.
‘Great,’ she said aloud. ‘What now?’
What now? Her voice echoed. What now, what now?
She turned to her left.
‘What now?’ she shouted. She’d had so many surprise helpers this evening, she realised she was half waiting for the next one to come trotting out of the shadows. After a few moments, as the darkness seemed to become almost solid, pressing in on her and her tiny beam of light, she gave herself a shake.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Figure this out.’ It felt better to speak aloud somehow; the sound of her own voice gave some shape to the emptiness around her. ‘The tunnel goes both ways, so probably both ways lead out of the castle. The worst that can happen is that one way takes you to a dead end, or back to the grounds, and then at least you’ll know what you’re doing. Since you have no way of knowing which way to go, you may as well just pick one.’
Nonetheless she stood rooted to the spot for at least another minute before turning right and striding resolutely into the darkness. To the left, she reasoned, was the Forbidden Forest, which was, as far as she knew, entirely contained within the grounds, and was supposedly so large that even Hagrid didn’t know everything that lived in it, so that was the less likely direction. She tried to ignore how tenuous this logic was, given that the passage could bend and turn in any direction, and trudged on at a semi-trot, losing all track of time as the unchanging walls of the passage flickered in the light of her wand. On and on she walked, through the darkness, at once suffocating and immense, half of her longing for the passage to end, half of her hoping it would go on forever.
She tried not to think about how long it had been since Julius had sent the letter informing Voldemort of her existence, and how quickly he might read it and react.
Eventually she thought she felt the ground begin to climb slightly – was she imagining it? – it seemed to level out a little for a while, but then there was no mistaking it: she was definitely getting higher, and soon it was so steep that she was becoming short of breath. Suddenly desperate for light and fresh air, she went even faster, and soon was navigating ground so steep that she kept losing her footing on loose stones. Suddenly the passage turned sharply for the first time, and was now so vertiginous that she actually had to cling to a boulder to winch herself round the corner, and then scrabble on all-fours as the passage narrowed alarmingly, not high enough for her to even crouch; now it was so narrow that she actually had to squeeze through a gap between two enormous rocks, whereupon she suddenly tumbled out onto flat ground bathed in moonlight.
She found that she was in a spacious cave, through whose opening she could see nothing but the night sky and an enormous moon. Walking out, she found herself on a rocky outcrop, looking down on the moonlit rooftops of a tiny toy village. She realised she was on the same path she had climbed some weeks ago from Hogsmeade, the day after Snape had first fucked her.
It felt a very long time ago.
She took a deep breath, crossed her fingers, and Disapparated.
*
Delilah had never Apparated such a distance far before, even alongside her father or Connie, and as soon she inhaled the bracing air of Dover, she staggered to the nearest wall and threw up, barely managing to drag her hair out of the way in time. She groaned and leaned against the wall, eyes closed, waiting for her head to stop spinning.
When she finally opened her eyes she found to her relief that she was in a deserted street. She could see a murky stripe of sea at the end of the road, but there were no signs of life. She poured some water from the tip of her wand into her mouth, and made for the esplanade. She’d been to Dover so many times during a lifetime of back-and-forth visits from France, and it had always been a riot of activity: thousands of cars lining up to load the ferry, enormous freight lorries roaring along, foot passengers clustering with brightly coloured luggage, and, in summer, the greens and cafes on the seafront alive with holidaymakers enjoying the view. It seemed bleak and unfriendly now, a vast, flat wasteland without a soul in sight. As she walked along, looking for a landmark she recognised, the first tinges of sunrise appeared above the horizon, and a vast steamer emitted a low, deafening groan as it lumbered laboriously into the port. The fresh sea breeze was bitingly cold, and she was still only wearing her thin black blouse. She was shivering so deeply that her head and neck were aching.
Every time she’d travelled to or from Dover had been with Ormond, since, as a minor without an Apparition licence, she couldn’t travel alone; and he had always already bought the tickets to enter the International Apparition Space in advance, so she realised she didn’t even know where she was supposed to go to get them. She eventually reached a parade of shops and saw, amongst several boarded-up shop fronts, one with a light beyond the small window, and a sign outside reading “Dover-Calais: 8G.” She headed for it, and pushed open the heavy door.
The office was claustrophobically small, lit by a fluorescent strip light that flickered on the low ceiling. Mildewy cardboard boxes were piled three-deep along one wall, and a sofa with torn covering sat orphaned against the back wall. She felt an overwhelming urge to turn back and run out again.
‘Yes?’ the man said in a bored, exhausted voice, without looking up at her. She paused, then, almost on instinct, spoke in French; a meagre disguise, but it made her feel a fraction safer.
‘Bon matin,’ she said, ‘parlez-vous Français?’
‘Oui,’ he replied tonelessly. ‘Comment puis-je t’aider?’
‘Un billet pour Calais s’il vous plaît.’
‘Bie sûr. Votre nom?’
‘Deli-‘ she began automatically, then broke off abruptly. ‘Delia Delacour,’ she invented, saying the first name that came into her head, but her stomach clenched when he looked sharply up at her, catching the hesitation. She thought she saw a strange flicker in his eyes, and a tiny suggestion of a glance down at the sheaf of papers on his desk, so quick and subtle that if she hadn’t been on the alert, she might have missed it.
‘Bien sûr mademoiselle,’ he said, his tone suddenly deferential, pushing his wheeled chair slightly away from the desk, and Delilah’s keen eye caught the flash of his hand vanishing into a fold of his robes-
‘STUPEFY!’ she shouted. The chair rocketed back and crashed into the wall, the man slumping in it for a second before toppling slowly over and flopping to the floor, his wand clattering out of his hand. She launched her body up onto the counter and leaned over it, snatching at the papers on the desk. Right on top was a poorly-reproduced but unmistakeable photograph of herself: she recognised it as a crop from the Beauxbatons group photo which had been taken at Hogwarts for the newspaper before the Triwizard Tournament. She’s been standing right at the back, off to one side, smiling awkwardly, her chin intermittently concealed by the bouffant quiff of the boy in front of her who kept tossing his head back in a winning fashion. Connie had had two dozen copies of L’Herault shipped over by a colleague there the day it had appeared, and Ormond had cut it out and sent it to all of his friends. Underneath the picture was written:
WANTED
REWARD: 500G
DELILAH BLACKTHORN / DU LAC
(HEIGHT: approx. 5’11; EYES: brown; LANGUAGE: French / English)
Underneath the writing was an inked insignia of a skull with a snake slithering slowly through its jaws. Voldemort’s agents had moved against her with incredible speed.
She crumpled the paper in her fist and staggered backwards out of the office, running along the road and turning instinctively down a tiny alley, seeking cover anywhere she could find it. She tucked herself into the first doorway she saw and leaned against the heavy green and white stained glass window in the door, her eyes closed tight.
After a few seconds, though, the door opened inwards and, totally taken aback, she grabbed wildly at the doorframe to stop herself from falling backwards into the room beyond. A rough hand caught her by the shoulder blade and pushed her upright, chuckling ‘oopsy daisy Miss,’ and as she turned to him, he gave a sharp inward whistle of breath.
‘Fuckin’ ‘ell,’ he breathed. ‘Miss du Lac.’
It was Mundungus Fletcher.
She grabbed him by the robes, pulled him out into the alley and pushed him against the wall, holding her wand to his throat.
‘Oi!’ he yelped, and grappled for his wand; she rammed her knee hard into his crotch and he doubled over with a dull grunt, his eyes squeezed shut, apparently in too much pain even to yell out. She disarmed him, and pointed both wands at him.
‘Don’t make a sound,’ she said warningly.
‘What you gonna do to me now?’ he wheezed, looking piteously up at her, still crouched over, his bulgy eyes watering. ‘You’ve got me wand and me manhood.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said wildly. ‘I’m going to have to… fucking hell, I don’t know. One of us is going to have to kill the other, aren’t they?’
‘Ow’d you figure?’
‘Voldemort,’ she hissed, opening out the sheet of paper that was still balled up in her fist and shaking it in his face. ‘Voldemort’s got a bounty on my head. If I let you live, you’ll take me to him and collect the money.’
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he said with indignation, straightening gingerly. ‘I’m no Death Eater, I’m on Dumbledore’s side.’
‘Don’t make me laugh,’ she said bitterly. ‘You may be no Death Eater but you’re on Prenderghast’s side. You took a message to him from the Death Eaters; you put him in touch with your watchdogs here in Dover to help him catch Connie and Matilda; you lent him an Invisibility Cloak so he could break into Hogwarts to kidnap me.’
‘I’m a fixer, people are always coming to me for stuff. I didn’t know why he wanted any of those things, did I?’
‘Oh, sure,’ she spat. ‘So what are you doing here if you’re not passing out my picture to your contacts?’
‘If you must know,’ he said with wounded dignity, I’m waiting for a shipment of mellowvine sprouts from a mate in the ’Ague. In my line of work, I spend ‘alf me life in Dover. And Plymouth, and Southampton. I didn’t even know about no bounty on your ’ead.’
She narrowed her eyes at him as he blinked up at her. Either he was a very good actor, or he was telling the truth: he really was here on unrelated business.
‘Well, you know now,’ she said guardedly.
‘Look,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘Like I said, I’m on Dumbledore’s side if I’m on anyone’s. I’m a paid ’and though, don’t get involved in the politics-’
‘Politics!’ Delilah interjected incredulously.
‘-I pass messages, do little favours, put people in touch, fix people up with what they need for a Sickle ‘ere and there, but I don’t get involved in the big stuff!’
‘Whatever. As if you’d pass up 500 Galleons. You’re a greedy, unprincipled little bastard.’
‘I’ve passed up more in my time.’
Delilah didn’t know what to say to that, or what to do next. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then she lowered the wands, and he lowered his hands.
‘So you’re a fixer,’ she said. ‘Can you help me?’
‘Depends. What do you need?’
‘I need to get to France. I can’t get past the border guards though, they’ve got my picture.’
‘Easy. You got money?’
‘Yes.’
‘Giss me wand back then.’
‘No. Help me first.’
Mundungus shrugged, and headed back towards the door he’d emerged from. ‘Come in ’ere. It’s safe.’ He pushed it open so that she could see a small, sparse inn beyond it with wooden floorboards and a few mismatched tables. She approached and poked her head in warily; the room was empty except for one sleepy-looking wizard at a table in the corner with a shabby flat cap pulled low over his forehead, and a moody-looking wizard behind the bar with black scrubby hair, sitting on a stool and reading a newspaper.
‘What is this place?’ she said in a low voice, following Mundungus in and letting the door fall closed behind her.
‘Just a quiet spot where us tradesmen come for a breather,’ he said.
‘You’re sure it’s safe?’ she said.
‘We keep our eyes closed in ’ere,’ he said enigmatically, and gestured to a table in the corner. ‘Go and sit down. I’ll be back.’
He went to the bar and spoke to the barman in an undertone for a few moments; the barman didn’t look up from his paper whilst Mundungus was speaking, but nodded discreetly, glanced at Delilah, and then slid off his chair and vanished through a set of saloon doors behind him. Mundungus then left, and was gone for a long time. The bar man brought Delilah a cup of weak, soapy-tasting coffee and a glass of cloudy water, which she sipped edgily. Someone had left an old copy of The Daily Prophet on the table, but when she tried to distract herself by reading the front page, the words made absolutely no impression on her. In the end she just sat, drumming her fingers on the table and watching a spider spinning a web in the corner of the window beside the table. When Mundungus eventually came back, she jumped out of her seat eagerly.
‘C’mon, we gotta hurry,’ he said gruffly, throwing a couple of coins on the table for the coffee and turning to leave. Delilah followed, and strode behind him as he hurried along the alley. They wound through a maze of streets, running roughly parallel to the seafront, until they came out opposite an enormous shipyard. Mundungus led her through a maze of shipping containers and giant, stationary machinery, to a tiny wooden cabin in the corner where a man in a flat cap, who she could have sworn was the same man from the inn, was sitting behind a window with a raised round melaphone. Mundungus leaned against the counter and gestured for Delilah to do the same. He leaned close to the window and spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
‘Delivery for Reg,’ he said. The man nodded, and suddenly the wall of the cabin seemed to vanish, and Delilah fell through to the other side and landed on a filthy blue carpet, dropping her bag. Mundungus held out a hand and hauled her back up to her feet.
‘Clumsy, aren’t you?’ he observed good-naturedly.
‘You could have warned me,’ she glared, swinging her bag back onto her shoulder. She looked around at what transpired to be an enormous waiting room with several plastic chairs arranged in rows.
‘Cutting it a bit fine aren’t you?’ the man in the cap grumbled to Mundungus. ‘They’ve already taken the others down, she’d better hurry.’
‘Down where?’ Delilah asked nervously.
‘Below decks.’
Something about that turn of phrase made Delilah shiver. She squared her shoulders, turning to Mundungus.
‘Right, how much do I owe you?’ she said, taking out her purse. ‘I might not have it all on me but I can get you the rest.’
‘I’ve ’eard that one before,’ Mundungus said wryly.
‘Well, I didn’t exactly start my evening thinking I’d be illegally skipping the country by morning. It’s been a weird night.’
Mundungus gave her a strange look, and then looked down at his shoes.
‘Nah, go on,’ he said to his feet. ‘We don’t ’ave time anyway.’
‘Don’t be stupid. How much? I’m good for it, whatever it is.’
‘I don’t want your money,’ he said. ‘Just… watch yerself, won’t you.’
He touched her briefly on the elbow, and before she could protest again, he had stepped around her and vanished back through the wall.
‘You’ll miss that boat if you’re not careful,’ the man in the cap said lazily from behind her.
‘Where am I supposed to go?’
‘Down those stairs,’ he said, pointing to a door in the far corner of the room. ‘I’d run if I was you.’
Delilah didn’t waste another second, but ran for the door; when she opened it she found herself stepping into a completely unlit rock tunnel with slippery wooden steps travelling steeply downwards. She hurried down them as quickly as she could for several minutes before she saw a faint glow of daylight ahead and heard the sounds of plashing water, and then came out into a kind of cave which seemed to have been carved out of the cliff face, with a long wooden jetty. At the end of the jetty she could see a queue of ten or eleven people, most of them with enormous bags, being loaded through a little round porthole into what she took to be the side of a colossal ship. She ran along the jetty and arrived, breathless, at the end of the queue, where another man in a flat cap, again completely indistinguishable from the one in the inn and the one upstairs in the waiting room, was checking people off a list.
‘Cutting it a bit fine aren’t you?’ he remarked to her when she approached the porthole, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Her head span, and she felt like she had slipped out of reality.
‘Delilah du Lac,’ she said, and he made a mark on his sheet.
‘In,’ he said brusquely, gesturing the porthole and glancing over his shoulder. She stepped through the porthole and looked around.
She only got the briefest glimpse of her surroundings before he slammed the hatch behind her and plunged them into pitch darkness, but it was enough to make her recoil; she might have clambered straight back out onto the jetty if the door hadn’t been closed. It was a tiny space amid towers of huge wooden crates stacked all around, into which at least forty people were crammed, with barely enough room for all of them to stand. They stood in an anxious clump, clinging to their luggage. She saw an elderly man in a shabby Muggle suit clutching a walking stick, supported under one arm by a young witch with a baby on her hip; two pale children of around eleven standing so close she could hardly tell where one ended and the other began; a black witch in elegant robes, who was at least sixty, sitting with upright dignity on her single, small suitcase; a teenage boy who looked like he was going to be sick, and a younger witch who kept darting uncertain looks at him. They were young, old, male, female, wearing Muggle clothes and robes, but they all had exactly the same expression of resignation and fear. Delilah couldn’t even see to descend the three or four steps downward, so she just sat down where she was on the step. Nobody spoke, but a small child gave a hiccupping little cry, and then fell silent, as though aware of breaking some unofficial code of silence.
It was a long time before the engines rumbled to life and the ship lurched into motion; at first it was a relief from the thick stillness, but immediately there was a scream of alarm and a clattering of something heavy falling to the floor, as people were thrown from their feet by the violence of the sudden movement. Delilah herself was nearly thrown off the step, grasped wildly around for something to cling to and, finding nothing, felt her way to the bottom step and sat on the floor, terrified that somebody would fall on her, but knowing she wouldn’t be able to keep her footing if she stood.
Delilah knew that the journey to Calais took barely two hours, but it felt like it lasted for days. The darkness was absolutely suffocating, and the air was stifling. The child who had started to cry before they’d set off now cried its lungs out, giving repeated shrill, gasping screams which seemed to physically tear through Delilah’s head, which pounded and pounded in time with the jolts of the ship. The air smelled horribly of engine fuel, and before long someone was sick, so the air was worsened by the acrid smell of vomit. With the rolling, jerking movements of the ship, Delilah’s stomach had already been turning, and now it gave an alarming convulsion and she staggered a few paces away and retched painfully, bringing up the coffee she’d drunk earlier. She went back to the steps and curled up in the foetal position on the hard floor to try and stop her head from spinning; throwing up twice in as many hours made her throat burn, and she poured a dribble of warm, dusty water from the tip of her wand into her mouth but immediately brought that up too, getting it in her hair. She lay in tortuous agony on the floor, drinking water to try and soothe her throat, bringing it up again, resolving not to drink any more, but then, unable to bear the taste in her mouth and the burning in her throat, drinking again even in the knowledge that she wouldn’t hold it down.
By the time a deafening horn rattled the bowels of the ship, she was almost in tears of misery and discomfort. The rocking intensified as the boat slowed, and when the engines died, the silence was almost painfully intense. She was worried they’d be left to wait for hours until everyone else had disembarked, stuck with the disgustingly pungent stench of the intermingled vomit of the numerous travellers, but thankfully, the hatch was yanked open almost immediately, and a voice barked ‘OFF! QUICKLY! NOW!’ Delilah unfurled herself stiffly and clambered up the steps and into the blessed fresh air and the blinding sunshine. There was no subterfuge at this end of the journey: they were simply climbing out onto an ordinary pier, and the ferryman (no flat cap this time) was looking left and right, chivvying the travellers out at great speed. The black witch with the small suitcase stepped smartly onto the pier, looking like she hadn’t turned a hair in the harrowing journey and was stepping out of a First Class cruise cabin, and promptly Disapparated without a backward glance. Delilah closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and followed suit, the jetty dissolving before her eyes just as the old man with the walking stick climbed shakily through the porthole, his mouth sagging open, his face as grey as a corpse.
*
Home.
Delilah Apparated into the small copse of trees a few yards from the house. The air was still and warm; the jasmine that climbed the wall opposite the house was in flower, filling the air with its deliciously familiar scent. The house looked cosy and safe, its little dormer windows reflecting the drifting clouds. She rushed straight to the front door.
She knew as soon as she pushed it open that the house was empty.
‘Maman?’ she called uncertainly, but her voice rang through the hall and kitchen unanswered. The French doors at the end of the living room admitted a beam of warm, dusty light from the overgrown garden. There was no sign of a struggle: everything felt undisturbed and peaceful. Nonetheless, she went straight through to the living room, checking for signs of life, then headed upstairs. The little bathroom, and her mother’s bedroom with its white-painted floorboards and neatly-made bed, the bedspread trimmed with faded roses, were neat and empty. She pushed open the door to her own bedroom, and found it also empty. Surprisingly empty: it looked spare and impersonal, like nobody had ever inhabited it. She was sure there’d been more stuff in it last time she’d been there, almost exactly a year earlier, during the last Easter holidays.
She walked into the bedroom and sat on the square edge of the tucked sheets, wondering what to do. It was still possible the Death Eaters had already been, and taken Genevieve with no struggle. But if they had… then what?
Find Dumbledore she supposed. Or Remus. Somehow. Head back to Hogwarts and wait for someone to arrive back, McGonagall or Flitwick or anybody, or try and get a message to someone.
The idea of reversing the whole frantic journey just defeated her. She felt sick with exhaustion, and toyed with the idea of sleeping for a bit, waiting to see if Genevieve came home. She felt ashamed at the very idea of sleeping whilst her mother’s fate was in the balance, but she simply didn’t know if she had the energy to keep going. She gazed at the temptingly fluffed pillow, and was on the verge of succumbing to the lure of the soft brushed cotton, when something caught her eye.
On the bedside table were three photograph frames: a small round one edged with little pieces of blue mirrored glass, a large one decorated with seashells she’d collected on holiday in Biarritz when she was seven, and a plain wooden one that had been painted with pink and yellow polka dots by Matilda. They had previously held a yellowish photo of Delilah as a toddler, held under her chubby little legs by Ormond, her throwing her head back with laughter as he stared devotedly at her; a picture of Delilah and Genevieve sitting on the beach, Delilah in a straw hat, holding a red spade and grinning toothily up at the camera, squinting in the sun whilst Genevieve in a bathing suit overturned a plastic beach bucket; and a photo of Matilda on her first and only holiday to France, wearing an enormous pink bow on top of her head and holding an equally enormous ice cream in her hand. All of the frames were now empty.
The sight made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
After frowning at the frames for a moment, she stood up from the bed and walked back downstairs. What did it mean? What might Genevieve have done with the photographs, and why? She walked again into the living room, and immediately spotted another framed photo on the coffee table. She picked it up. It had been a photo of her and Genevieve at the Pont du Gard when she was a child, her sitting on the stone wall of the bridge, with Genevieve’s arm around her, looking fondly down at her. The picture was still there, but Delilah was no longer in it.
She looked at the photo, her heart beating irregularly, a creeping fear rising from her stomach to her chest, when the door suddenly opened and Genevieve came in along with a gust of summer wind, wearing sunglasses, loose linen trousers and a pale green blouse, carrying a shopping bag. She turned to close the door, pushing her sunglasses up onto her head, and made for the kitchen. She walked in without seeing Delilah, who stood frozen to the spot, hearing her rustling with the shopping, before she came back out into the hall and, turning to hang her shopping bag on a hook, saw Delilah.
Genevieve stopped and backed away slightly. They stared at each other for several moments. A horrifying, dawning suspicion kept Delilah from moving or speaking. When they did speak, they did so at the same time.
‘Maman?’
‘Qui êtes-vous?’ Genevieve said tremulously.
Delilah swayed, and knocked her knee against the coffee table. She put down the framed photograph, afraid she would drop it.
‘Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?’ Genevieve demanded, her voice growing stronger.
Delilah’s eyes filled with tears.
‘…Maman?’ she whispered again.
Genevieve frowned.
‘Que?’
‘Maman?’ Delilah said again, tears spilling from her eyes. She took a tentative step towards her mother, who recoiled.
‘Maman!’ Delilah said, now with urgency, stepping closer still. ‘C’est moi! C’est Delilah!’
‘Je ne vous connais pas,’ Genevieve said stiffly, sounding alarmed. ‘S’il vous plait partez.’
‘Maman,’ Delilah said again, striding up to her and grabbing her by the shoulders. Her mother’s eyes, the most familiar thing in the world to her, the most reassuring sight she knew, the grey-blue irises, the satiny skin under her bottom lashes with its network of tiny creases, the slight downturn at the outer edge, were now filled with a look of blank, utter non-recognition mixed with fear. She felt like she was having a horrible nightmare.
‘Maman, Maman, MAMAN!’ she shouted, shaking Genevieve by the shoulders desperately, her voice rising to a shrill sob, ‘C’EST MOI! C’EST DELILAH! Rappelez moi, rappelez papa, Ormond, et le Pont du Gard, et nos vacances à Biarritz, et Devon, et Connie et Matilda, Maman! MAMAN!’
But Genevieve just gazed back, her fear now melting into pity, and her own eyes filled with tears, her hair falling over her face as Delilah shook her roughly.
‘Je suis désolé,’ she said helplessly. ‘Je ne vous connais pas. Je ne suis pas votre mère.’
‘Maman,’ Delilah whimpered, ‘c’est moi, je suis ta fille, s’il vous plait…’
‘Je n’ai pas un fille.’
Delilah shook her again, even tried to punch at her shoulders, to shock her into remembering her, but as in a nightmare her arms had no strength in them, and her pathetic, weak poundings on her mother’s suntanned chest were overpowered by huge, racking sobs. Genevieve’s expression, although distressed to tears by Delilah’s pleadings, was still as cold as the grave compared with the immortal love Delilah was used to seeing there, and, unable to bear it any more, she pushed her mother feebly aside and ran from the house.
