The apartment was a small one adjoining a spacious room that was on the second floor of the house, and communicating with it by folding doors. It contained little else than a small couch and a few necessary articles of the toilette. A large mat lay at the door, on which reposed the dog, which was poor Harry’s only companion—his only friend. The boy was up and leaning upon the window-sill, gazing earnestly through a small chink that was left in the beading (for the window was blocked up from without) which enabled him to see, and without danger of being observed by any one in the street, and likewise was quite of sufficient width to allow the morning sun to stream into the little room. With a deep sigh he turned from the window, and the dog at the same moment rose, and with grateful gestures approached its kind master. “The sun is shining, my poor Joy,” said Harry, mournfully; “but you and I may not gambol in its beams. The world without this gloomy house seems bright and beautiful, but we are prisoners, ’tis very, very strange; Gray tells me he is my uncle, and that there is a fearful secret connected with the family that forces him to shut himself and me up in this mysterious manner. Uncle Gray, I doubt you. Such a tale might suit the ears of a child, but—I—I am one no longer. Can this man be my uncle? His behaviour is so strange to me, alternately harsh and kind, affectionate and cruel. Alas! I know not what to think. Oh, how my heart yearns for the bright sunshine, the open sky, and the green fields! How long am I to be thus immured? Heaven only knows. I—will—I must seek some other explanation. I know he fears me, I have seen him shrink before my eyes. I have marked him tremble and turn pale at a chance word I uttered, and yet I had no clue to such feelings, because I knew not which word it was that moved him so; and this disguise, too, which he persuades, begs, implores of me to wear, as he says, for my life’s sake; ’tis very strange. These are not the garments of a young maiden as I am. What have I done that I should, thus forswear sex, liberty, sunshine, joy, all that makes life rich, and beautiful to the young? Alas! Alas! What have I done to be a dreary prisoner? In all my weary years, short, but oh, how long to me! But one face beamed with kindness on me, that face was Albert Seyton’s; but one voice spoke to me in accents of love and pity—that voice was Albert Seyton’s; but one heart seemed ever to really feel for me a pang of sorrow, and—and—that heart was Albert Seyton’s.” The young girl, for such she was, sunk into a chair and wept bitterly. Then suddenly dashing aside the tears that obscured her beautiful eyes, she said,—