Jack was thunderstruck. There was something in her voice which chilled him to his very bones. It was not natural offense for his recent short-comings, or doubt of his sincerity. He felt himself getting red in the darkness. “It was as if she had found me out to be a scoundrel, by Jove,” he said to himself afterward, which was a very different sort of thing from mere displeasure or jealousy. And in the silence that ensued, Mrs. Preston took no notice of anybody. She kept her place at the window, without looking round or saying another word; and in the darkness behind stood the two bewildered, trying to read in each other’s faces what it could mean. “Speak to her,” said Pamela, eagerly whispering close to his ear; but Jack, for his part, could not tell what to say. He was offended, and he did not want to speak to her; but, on the contrary, held Pamela fast, with almost a perverse desire to show her mother that the girl was his, and that he did not care. “It is you I want, and not your mother,” he said. They could hear each other speak, and could even differ and argue and be impassioned without anybody else being much the wiser. The only sound Mrs. Preston heard was a faint rustle of whispers in the darkness behind her. “No,” said Jack, “if she will be ill-tempered, I can’t help it. It is you I want,” and he stood by and held his ground. When the first lightning flashed into the room, this was how it found them. There was a dark figure seated at the window, relieved against the gleam, and two faces which looked at each other, and shone for a second in the wild illumination. Then Pamela gave a little shriek and covered her face. She was not much more than a child, and she was afraid. “Come in from the window, mamma! do come, or it will strike you; and let us close the shutters,” cried Pamela. There was a moment during which Mrs. Preston sat still, as if she did not hear. The room fell into blackness, and then blazed forth again, the window suddenly becoming “a glimmering square,” with the one dark outline against it. Jack held his little love with his arm, but his eyes were fascinated by that strange sight. What could it mean? Was she mad? Had something happened in his absence to bring about this wonderful change? The mother, however, could not resist the cry that Pamela uttered the second time. She rose up, and closed the shutters with her own hands, refusing Jack’s aid. But when the three looked at each other, by the light of the candles, they all looked excited and disturbed. Mrs. Preston sat down by the table, with an air so different from her ordinary looks, that she seemed another woman. And Jack, when her eyes fell upon him, could not help feeling something like a prisoner at the bar.