The Angel of Terror

That night the "grisly Jaggs" was later than usual. Lydia heard him shuffling along the passage, and presently the door of his room closed with a click. She was sitting at the piano, and had stopped playing at the sound of his knock, and when Mrs. Morgan came in to announce his arrival, she closed the piano and swung round on the music stool, a look of determination on her delicate face.

"He's come, miss."

"And for the last time," said Lydia ominously. "Mrs. Morgan, I can't stand that weird old gentleman any longer. He has got on my nerves so that I could scream when I think of him."

"He's not a bad old gentleman," excused Mrs. Morgan.

"I'm not so worried about his moral character, and I dare say that it is perfectly blameless," said Lydia determinedly, "but I have written a note to Mr. Glover to tell him that I really must dispense with his services."

"What's he here for, miss?" asked Mrs. Morgan.

Her curiosity had been aroused, but this was the first time she had given it expression.

"He's here because----" Lydia hesitated, "well, because Mr. Glover thinks I ought to have a man in the house to look after me."

"Why, miss?" asked the startled woman.

"You'd better ask Mr. Glover that question," said Lydia grimly.

She was beginning to chafe under the sense of restraint. She was being "school-marmed" she thought. No girl likes the ostentatious protection of the big brother or the head mistress. The soul of the schoolgirl yearns to break from the "crocodile" in which she is marched to church and to school, and this sensation of being marshalled and ordered about, and of living her life according to a third person's programme, and that third person a man, irked her horribly.

Old Jaggs was the outward and visible sign of Jack Glover's unwarranted authority, and slowly there was creeping into her mind a suspicion that Jean Briggerland might not have been mistaken when she spoke of Jack's penchant for "ordering people about."

Life was growing bigger for her. She had broken down the barriers which had confined her to a narrow promenade between office and home. The hours which she had had to devote to work were now entirely free, and she could sketch or paint whenever the fancy took her--which was not very often, though she promised herself a period of hard work when once she was settled down.