A night of high wind follows the soft evening, and the next day is a dry storm, dark and rainless, with sand in the streets. Lucy no longer trusts the alley. The casement that threw the casket has made the nook vulgar, and the flowers seem to have eyes. Early, before anyone else is about, she props the plants the doctor trampled and wipes his footprints from the beds. At dusk the boarders gather in the refectory for the pious reading, always the same old book of saints' legends, full of miracles she finds absurd and of confessors who boast of breaking high-born women. She sits through it until the stories leave her hot and sleepless. After that she leaves the moment Rosine lights the lamps, quietly, in the little bustle before silence. Candles may not be carried about, so she takes the dark classes or, in summer, her casement above the garden.
This evening she opens the dormitory door and feels that the room is not empty. No one is in the white beds. A dumpy, motherly woman in a shawl and a very clean nightcap stands at Lucy's toilet, opening the work-box and each drawer in turn, lifting every article, glancing at every paper, neat and unhurried. Lucy watches with a secret pleasure in the skill of it, then understands the danger. If Madame Beck turns and finds her, the disguises drop and they cannot go on working together. Lucy is not angry enough to want that. She likes the lightness of this yoke, and she has no love-secret for a spy to steal. She goes down the stairs as soundlessly as the spider on the banister, and laughs in the schoolroom because she now knows Madame saw the doctor in the garden and has invented the wrong plot. The laugh dies. For an hour she is sore, fiery, and in tears, not for the mistrust, which she does not value at twopence, but for thoughts the search has stirred. Next day she is Lucy Snowe again. The drawers are locked, the dresses folded as she left them, a bunch of dried white violets unstirred, the lace unrumpled. She decides to let the bygones go.
What still puzzles her is how the doctor knew the casket had fallen if he had not helped to throw it. While he is absent she thinks she could ask him. Georgette is nearly well, and his visits have grown rare, until Madame Beck comes into the nursery, says the child still has a little fever, and announces that she will go out in a fiacre, call on the doctor, and send him, while Lucy receives him alone. The child is only warm with July. Lucy tells her stories and almost cries when the little arms go round her neck, because feeling is scarce in that house. The doctor arrives at a run. Rosine stays to listen, asks whether he got the box and who threw it, and how he knew to come. He says he was with a patient in the college and saw the box dropped from that window. Rosine is disappointed that there is no love-mystery. He laughs, and Lucy sees him give her a gold piece. The pink or grey dress and the pocketed apron are not what has wounded him. Who is, then, he does not say.
He is drawing on his gloves when Lucy, looking at the houses beyond the garden, sees the same lattice open. A hand waves a white handkerchief, and a light paper falls. She speaks before she means to. He sends her to fetch it, because he would be seen and she would not. She finds the folded paper on a shrub and brings it back. He tears it into pieces without reading, and says it is not her fault. Whose, Lucy asks. He still will not name the girl. If he knew Lucy better, he says, he might trust her as a duenna for someone innocent, inexperienced, and badly snared. Lucy feels no vocation for ethereal creatures, but she remembers a good turn she owes him, and she says she will do what she can. He claims to be only a spectator. She runs through the household and settles, chuckling, on Madame Beck as the only woman among them who can even seem superior. He feels the amusement, colours, and turns for his hat. Her heart smites her. She begs him to tell her who the girl is. He begins: so spotless, so beautiful, impossible that one house should hold two like her. The latch of Madame's door clicks. A sneeze explodes, the kind of accident that happens to the best of people. Madame comes forward composed, sneezes again, says she has a cold, and pours out the story of her errands. The prayer-bell rings. Lucy leaves her with the doctor.
