He opened the door opposite to him, after having knocked and received no answer, and peered cautiously in. The daylight was fading, and the blind of the window was half down, and Bowker's eyesight was none of the best now, so that he took some little time before he perceived the outline of a figure stretched in the white dimity-covered easy-chair by the little Pembroke table in the middle of the room. Although some noise had been made by the opening of the door, the figure had not moved; it never stirred when Bowker gave a little premonitory cough to notify his advent; it remained in exactly The same position, without stirring hand or foot, when Bowker said, "A friend has come to see you, Mrs.--Lambert." Then a dim undefined sense of terror came upon William Bowker, and he closed the door silently behind him, and advanced into the room. Immediately he became aware of a faint sickly smell, a cloying, percolating odour, which seemed to fill the place; but he had little time to think of this, for immediately before him lay the form of Margaret, her eyes closed, her features rigid, her long red hair falling in all its wild luxuriance over her shoulders. At first William thought she was dead; but, stooping close over her, he marked her slow laboured breathing, and noticed that from time to time her hands were unclenched, and then closed again as tightly as ever. He took a little water from a tumbler on the table and sprinkled it on her face, and laid his finger on her pulse; after a minute or two she opened her eyes, closing them again immediately, but after a time opening them again, and fixing them on Bowker's face with a long wistful gaze. "Are you one of them also?" she asked, in a deep hushed voice. "How many more to come and gibber and point at me; or, worse than all, to sit mutely staring at me with pitiless unforgiving eyes! How many more? You are the latest. I have never seen you before." "O yes you have," said Bowker quietly, with her hand in his, and his eyes steadfastly fixed on hers--"O yes you have: you recollect me, my dear Mrs. Ludlow." He laid special stress on the name, and as he uttered the words, Margaret started, a new light flashed into her beautiful eyes, and she regarded him attentively. "What was that you said?" she asked; "what name did you call me?" "What name? Why, your own, of course; what else should I call you, my dear Mrs. Ludlow?" She started again at the repetition, then her eyes fell, and she said dreamily, "But that is not my name--that is not my name." Bowker waited for a moment, and then said, "You might as well pretend to have forgotten me and our talk at Elm Lodge that day that I came up to see Geoffrey." "Elm Lodge! Geoffrey!--ah, good God, now I remember all!" said Margaret, in a kind of scream, raising herself in the chair, and wringing Bowker's hand. "Hush, my dear Madam; don't excite yourself; I thought you would remember all; you--"