"None whatever, I'm afraid. You see, the crime--assuming him for the moment to have been guilty of it--was committed before his insanity declared itself. It is not as though he had been a lunatic at the time of the murder." "What a terrible fate! Does he know that his daughter is alive?" "He knows everything. It is at his own wish that Eleanor has been kept in ignorance of her real parentage for so long a time; and, had Jacob Lloyd lived, the secret would not have been told her even now." "But how did it happen that none of the gossips of Pembridge found out that Eleanor was not my uncle's child?" "It was not till about a year after their adoption of the child that your uncle, aunt, and Eleanor made their first appearance at Pembridge, your uncle having just bought Bridgeley, where he lived till he died. They had come from a town two hundred miles away, and did not know a soul in the place." "Has no rumour of the truth ever crept out?" "Never, I am certain." "And Eleanor herself has never had any suspicion?" "Not the slightest, so far as I know. How should she? She was but eleven months old when her mother died: far too young to have the faintest recollection of anything that happened." At this moment, they both heard a knock at the front door, but without paying any heed to it. Miss Bellamy was never troubled with late visitors. There were other lodgers in the house, and the knock could come from no one in search of her. But presently came the sound of footsteps on the stairs, followed by Eliza's timid tap at the room door. "Come in," said Miss Bellamy, a little more sharply than usual. She felt annoyed that her tête-à-tête with Gerald should be thus interrupted. The door opened, and Eliza's head was intruded. "A gentleman to see you, ma'am. He won't give no name." "A gentleman to see me!" said Miss Bellamy, as she started up in surprise. She felt slightly scandalised to think that any gentleman should be so indiscreet as to call upon her at such an hour as eleven o'clock p.m. But by this time the gentleman, who followed the girl upstairs, had pushed himself into the room; and Eliza, a little frightened at his audacity, slunk timidly out and shut the door quickly behind her. "May I ask, sir----" began Miss Bellamy frigidly, and then something in the stranger's face suddenly froze her into silence. And yet not much of his face was to be seen, all the lower part of it being hidden in the folds of a large plaid, and the upper part shaded by the broad brim of a soft felt hat, from under which looked forth two dark melancholy eyes of singular beauty. Miss Bellamy's hands began to tremble, and she leaned against the table for support.