"The messenger has been to Hyde Park Gardens, ma'am. The Judge and Lady Corbet are gone out to dinner." Lady Corbet! Of course Ellinor knew that he was married. Had she not been present at the wedding in East Chester Cathedral? But, somehow, these recent events had so carried her back to old times, that the intimate association of the names, "the Judge and Lady Corbet," seemed to awaken her out of some dream. "Oh, very well," she said, just as if these thoughts were not passing rapidly through her mind. "Let me be called at seven to-morrow morning, and let me have a cab at the door to Hyde Park Gardens at eight." And so she went to bed; but scarcely to sleep. All night long she had the scenes of those old times, the happy, happy days of her youth, the one terrible night that cut all happiness short, present before her. She could almost have fancied that she heard the long-silent sounds of her father's step, her father's way of breathing, the rustle of his newspaper as he hastily turned it over, coming through the lapse of years; the silence of the night. She knew that she had the little writing-case of her girlhood with her, in her box. The treasures of the dead that it contained, the morsel of dainty sewing, the little sister's golden curl, the half-finished letter to Mr. Corbet, were all there. She took them out, and looked at each separately; looked at them long--long and wistfully. "Will it be of any use to me?" she questioned of herself, as she was about to put her father's letter back into its receptacle. She read the last words over again, once more: "From my death-bed I adjure you to stand her friend; I will beg pardon on my knees for anything." "I will take it," thought she. "I need not bring it out; most likely there will be no need for it, after what I shall have to say. All is so altered, so changed between us, as utterly as if it never had been, that I think I shall have no shame in showing it him, for my own part of it. While, if he sees poor papa's, dear, dear papa's suffering humility, it may make him think more gently of one who loved him once though they parted in wrath with each other, I'm afraid." So she took the letter with her when she drove to Hyde Park Gardens. Every nerve in her body was in such a high state of tension that she could have screamed out at the cabman's boisterous knock at the door. She got out hastily, before any one was ready or willing to answer such an untimely summons; paid the man double what he ought to have had; and stood there, sick, trembling, and humble. CHAPTER XVI AND LAST. "Is Judge Corbet at home? Can I see him?" she asked of the footman, who at length answered the door. He looked at her curiously, and a little familiarly, before he replied, "Why, yes! He's pretty sure to be at home at this time of day; but whether he'll see you is quite another thing." "Would you be so good as to ask him? It is on very particular business."