Arrived there, she found a woman’s figure standing, in an uncertain attitude, near it. Something—a nameless chill, an unspeakable dread, took possession of her. She did not speak, but paused, looking at the figure, her mind disturbed with vague recollections of Otho’s last visit. ‘Miss Askam!’ said the loiterer, in an uncertain voice. ‘Yes; who is it?’ ‘It is I—Ada. I wanted to speak to you.’ ‘Come in with me, then,’ she replied, but felt all the time that she was inviting some great terror and woe to enter her house. She opened the door, and led Ada into the drawing-room, turned up the light, and looked at her; and as she looked, the words were frozen upon her lips at the aspect of the figure before her. Had not the voice said, ‘It is I—Ada,’ she would scarcely have recognised this countenance. Ada wore a large, thick, woollen shawl, falling loosely about her; and a small hat, from under which showed a face which had aged by twenty years, and which was not only aged, but seamed, furrowed, worn with lines of what must have been mortal anguish, seeing that every one of them had been stamped in less than five short months. The pretty, delicate, meaningless face was clean gone: in its stead there was a mask, betraying a mind devoured by misery; eyes which looked at once hard and frightened, hunted and yet defiant—the eyes of an animal at bay; a countenance to fill the most indifferent beholder with horror. Struck literally speechless, Eleanor stood, her hand on the table, and stared at the figure with wide open eyes, while she felt cold and terror seize every limb. What did this apparition want with her or hers? A sickly dread, a kind of dim first suspicion of the meaning of it all crept into her heart. ‘Miss Askam,’ said this spectre of Ada Dixon, in a low and husky voice, ‘I’m in trouble.’ ‘Yes,’ almost gasped the other. ‘I’m come to you, since it was no use writing to your brother. Where is he?’ The tongue of Eleanor at first clave to the roof of her mouth; at last, in a hoarse voice, she asked— ‘What have you to do with my brother?’ With a swift motion, Ada unfastened the pin at her throat; her shawl slid from her shoulders to the ground, and she confronted Eleanor. Trembling overpowered the latter. Speech was at first denied her. She could stand no more, but crouched upon a chair, and gasped out— ‘Oh, horrible, horrible!’ Suddenly a wild gleam of hope crossed her mind. Why was she assuming the very worst to have happened? By what right did she condemn not only Otho, but Ada? She sprang up again, went close to the girl, and almost whispered— ‘Did he not marry you?’ ‘Marry me!’ repeated Ada, in a fearful voice of bitterness, scorn, and despair. ‘Nay, he only swore he would, again and again.’ ‘And—and——’ she shivered still. ‘And when was this?’