The stranger did not speak, but swiftly unrolling his plaid, let it half drop to the ground and took off his hat. Miss Bellamy's face grew as white as death. She started forward; and then she shrank back, all a-tremble. Gerald Warburton's eyes turned from the stranger to her, and then went back to the man; a tall, thin, frail-looking figure, with a long white beard, and white hair that fell over the collar of his coat. "Sir--you--you are either Ambrose Murray or his ghost!" slowly gasped Miss Bellamy. "In Heaven's name, what has brought you here?" "I have escaped!" exclaimed the man in a low, hoarse voice. "Escaped at last!" He clasped his hands suddenly above his head, gave utterance to a short, sharp, hysterical laugh, staggered forward a few steps, and would have fallen to the ground had not Gerald Warburton caught him in his arms. CHAPTER IV. A BROKEN LIFE. Gerald Warburton did not leave London for Pembridge next day, nor for several days afterwards. When Ambrose Murray learned that Gerald was the nephew of Jacob Lloyd, the man who had so befriended his daughter, and that Gerald's mother was the Minna Lloyd whom he remembered, and who had been one of his wife's dearest friends, he clung to him as a man who is being carried away by the tide will cling to the life-buoy which his hands have unexpectedly grasped. And, indeed, this man, who, after having been closely shut up from the world for twenty years, found himself thrown again on the great stream of life, seemed as helpless and bewildered as some weak swimmer who contends in vain against the resistless tide that is fast carrying him away. He was more than bewildered--he was frightened by the vast whirlpool of London life in which he found himself such an infinitesimal atom. There had always been an element of weakness, of vacillation, in his character. He had always been one of those men who are inevitably crushed into the background in the great rush and struggle for life with which they are mixed up--men not lacking talent, but simply from want of energy and physique, and power of elbowing their way to the front, drifting year after year helplessly into the rear, seeing themselves distanced by younger and fleeter feet, and seeing the prizes that in the flush of youth seemed so close at hand and easy of attainment, receding hopelessly into the distance. Sometimes disappointment and bitterness of heart sour such men for ever; sometimes they sink into mere dreamers and idealists, who console themselves for the buffets of the real world by living as much as possible an inner life of their own, in which destiny is carved out by them in accordance with their varying fancies, and in which they grasp--in imagination--whatever prizes please them best.