Had not his heart told him who it was? Edgar stood stock still, scarcely breathing, gazing at her. He had wondered how this meeting would come about, for come it must, he knew--and whether he would be calm and she calm, as if they had met yesterday? Yet when the real emergency arrived he was quite unprepared for it. He did not seem able to move, but gazed at her as if all his heart had gone into his eyes, incapable of more than the mere politeness of standing by to let her pass, which he had meant to do when he thought her a stranger. The difficulty was all thrown upon her. She too had made a pause. She looked up at him with a tremulous smile and a quivering lip. She put out her hands half timidly, half eagerly; her colour changed from red to pale, and from pale to red. “Have you forgotten me, then?” she said. CHAPTER IX. Miss Lockwood’s Story. I am obliged to go back a few days, that the reader may be made aware of the causes which detained Edgar, and of the business which had occupied his mind, mingled with all the frivolities of the Entertainment, during his absence. Annoyance, just alloyed with a forlorn kind of amusement, was his strongest sentiment, when he found himself appointed by his patron to be a kind of father-confessor to Miss Lockwood, to ascertain her story, and take upon himself her defence, if defence was possible. Why should he be selected for such a delicate office? he asked; and when he found himself seated opposite to the young lady from the cloak and shawl department in Mr. Tottenham’s room, his sense of the incongruity of his position became more and more embarrassing. Miss Lockwood’s face was not of a common kind. The features were all fine, even refined, had the mind been conformable; but as the mind was not of a high order, the fine face took an air of impertinence, of self-opinion, and utter indifference to the ideas or feelings of others, which no coarse features could have expressed so well; the elevation of her head was a toss, the curl of her short upper lip a sneer. She placed herself on a chair in front of Mr. Tottenham’s writing-table, at which Edgar sat, and turned her profile towards him, and tucked up her feet on a foot-stool. She had a book in her hand, which she used sometimes as a fan, sometimes to shield her face from the fire, or Edgar’s eyes, when she found them embarrassing. But it was he who was embarrassed, not Miss Lockwood. It cost him a good deal of trouble to begin his interrogatory. “You must remember,” he said, “that I have not thrust myself into this business, but that it is by your own desire--though I am entirely at a loss to know why.” “Of course you are,” said Miss Lockwood. “It is one of the things that no man can be expected to understand--till he knows. It’s because we’ve got an object in common, sir, you and me----” “An object in common?”