'Yes, safe indeed! She whom you, under some strange but no doubt beneficent hallucination, believe to be the lady you lost in Wales, is safe indeed, for she is in the spirit-land with her whose blessing lent her to me--she has returned to her who was once a female blacksmith at Oldhill, and is now the brightest, sweetest, purest saint in Paradise.' Dead! My soul had been waiting for the word--expecting it ever since I left the studio with my mother--but now it sounded more dreadful than if it had come as a surprise. 'Tell me all,' I cried, 'at once--at once. She did not return, you say, on the day following the catastrophe--when did she return?--when did you next see her?' 'I never saw her again alive,' answered Wilderspin mournfully; 'but you are so pale, Mr. Aylwin, and your eyes are so wild, I had better defer telling you what little more there is to tell until you have quite recovered from the shock.' 'No; now, now.' Wilderspin looked with a deep sigh at the picture of 'Faith and Love,' fired by the lights of sunset, where Winnie's face seemed alive. 'Well,' said he, 'as she did not come, I worked at my painting of "Ruth" all day; and on the next morning, as I was starting for Primrose Court to seek her, Mrs. Gudgeon came kicking frantically at the street-door. When it was opened, she came stamping upstairs, and as I advanced to meet her, she shook her fists in my face, shouting out: "I could tear your eyes out, you vagabones." "Why, what is the matter?" I asked in great surprise. "You've bin and killed her, that's all," said the woman, foaming at the mouth. She then told me that her daughter, almost immediately on reaching home after having left the studio in the company of my servant, had fallen down in a swoon. A succession of swoons followed. She never rallied. She was then lying dead in Primrose Court.' 'And what then? Answer me quickly.' 'She asked me to give her money that her daughter might be buried respectably and not by the parish. I told her it was all hallucination about the girl being her daughter, and that a spiritual body could not be buried, but she seemed so genuinely distressed that I gave her the money.' 'Spiritual body! Hallucination!' I said. 'I heard her voice in the London streets, and she was seen selling baskets at the theatre door. Where shall I find the house?' 'It is of no use for you to go there,' he said. 'Nothing shall prevent my going at once.' A feverish yearning had come upon me to see the body. 'If you _will_ go,' said Wilderspin, 'it is No. 2 Primrose Court, Great Queen Street, Holborn. II I hurried out of the house, and soon finding a cab I drove to Great Queen Street.