"Lady Chandos prefers privacy. Strangers are not in the habit of entering here; nor can their doing so be sanctioned." "I presume that I am speaking to Mr. Harry Chandos?" Mr. Chandos bowed his head, very coldly. Mr. Edwin Barley bowed in his turn; it might have been called an introduction. "I will retreat," he said, "and I suppose I must beg your pardon for intruding. It did not occur to me that my strolling in might be unwelcome." Mr. Chandos said nothing to detain him, and Mr. Edwin Barley raised his hat and departed. Mr. Chandos returned the courtesy, and looked after him. "Who can he be, I wonder? I don't much like his face." "I think it is the new tenant, sir. I saw him at the house just now." "_He_ the tenant!" returned Mr. Chandos. "Miss Hereford, what is the matter with you? You are as white as that statue." I turned it off, giving no explanation; and Mr. Chandos walked towards the gate. I daresay I did look white, for the sight of Mr. Edwin Barley brought back all the old horror of the events that had occurred during my sojourn in his house. Not that it was so much the recollection that drove the colour from my cheeks, as the dread fear that he should recognise me though why I should have feared it, I did not know. Little chance was there of that—had I been calm enough to judge the matter sensibly. While Mr. Edwin Barley had remained stationary in appearance, I had changed from a child into a woman. But what had brought Mr. Edwin Barley entering as the tenant of that small and inferior house? he, with his fine fortune and his fine estates! There seemed to be mystery enough at Chandos! was this going to be another mystery? "I believe you must be right, Miss Hereford; he has entered the house," said Mr. Chandos, returning. "If he is really the new tenant—as I suppose he is—he appears by no means a prepossessing one. I wonder what his name may be?" I could not, for the whole world, have told Mr. Chandos that I knew his name; I could not have told that I knew him. All my hope was that it would never be betrayed that I had known him, that he was any connexion of mine, or that he would ever recognise me. What, what could have brought Edwin Barley to Chandos? CHAPTER XIV. THE NEW TENANT BY THE LODGE GATES. The new tenant by the lodge gates! And it was Edwin Barley! What could have brought him to Chandos? Was it to look after me? The conviction that it was so, fixed itself in my mind with startling force, and I grew nearly as sick with fear as I had been when I was a little child. That he was personally unknown to the Chandos family was evident: it seemed a strange thing that he should come and plant himself down at their very gates as soon as I became an inmate in the family. Had he in some crafty manner made himself acquainted with my entrance to it the very hour it took place? Surely it must have been so. And he had lost no time in following.