The nervous hands clasped together; the little hesitating woman looked with a face full of prayer and entreaty at the lady who sat there before her, like an arbiter of fate. If she could have known how the heart was beating in that lady's breast! Mrs Lycett-Landon did not speak for some time, not being able to command her voice. Then she said, tremulously, but with a great effort to be calm-- "You don't know what you ask. I am the last person----" "Oh, madam!" She had an old-fashioned, over-respectful way of using this word. And there was no fear or suspicion of the truth, though much anxiety, in her eyes. "Oh, madam! you have a kind face; and who should be the one to make peace but such as you, that can feel for a young creature, and knows what is in a mother's heart?" The words were scarcely out of her lips when Horace entered hastily, asking, before he saw that any stranger was present-- "Mother, has Fareham come back?" "No, Horace; but you see I am engaged." "I beg your pardon," he said, surprised by the look of agitation in the stranger's face. But he was terribly excited. "I won't stay a moment; but do please tell me papa's address. I cannot wait and knock about all day. Old Fareham is so tedious; he will take hours about it. Tell me my father's address." Horace was not without wiles of his own. He thought it more likely that he should extract this address when somebody was there. "Horace, I am engaged, as you can see." "Only a moment, mother; it was something flowery--Laburnum, or Acacia, or something. If I go to the office I can get it in a moment." The little widow rose up; something strange and terrible came over her face. "Young gentleman," she said, "are you any relation to Mr Lycett-Landon? You will tell me if no one else will." "Relation?" said Horace, with a laugh, "oh yes; only his son, that is all!" "And this lady? This lady is----?" "My mother; who else should she be?" the youth said. There was a moment during which the two women stood gazing at each other in an awful suspension of all sound or thought. And then the visitor uttered a great and terrible cry, and fell down at their feet upon the floor. CHAPTER X. THE END.