But as she turned to go in a great and terrible shock awaited her. She had just come away from the pillar, which altogether obliterated her slight, dark figure in its shadow and gave her a sort of invisibility, when the glass door opened at a touch, and some one else came out. They met face to face in the darkness. Rosalind uttered a stifled cry; the other only by a pant of quickened breathing acknowledged the alarm. She was gliding past noiselessly, when Rosalind, with sudden courage, caught her by the cloak in which she was wrapped from head to foot. “Oh, not to-night, oh, not to-night!” she said, with a voice of anguish; “for God’s sake, mother, mother, not to-night!” There was a pause, and no reply but the quick breathing, as if the passer-by had some hope of concealing herself. But then Madam spoke, in a low, hurried tone--“I must go; I must! but not for any pleasure of mine!” Rosalind clung to her cloak with a kind of desperation. “Another time,” she said, “but not, oh, not to-night!” “Let me go. God bless my dear! I cannot help it. I do only what I must. Rosalind, let me go,” she said. And next moment the dark figure glided swiftly, mysteriously, among the bushes towards the park. Rosalind came in with despair in her heart. It seemed to her that nothing more was left to expect, or hope for. Her mother, the mistress of this sad house, the wife of the dead who still lay there awaiting his burial. At no other moment perhaps would the discovery have come upon her with such a pang; and yet at any moment what could it be but misery? Jane was watching furtively on the stairs to see that her mistress’s exit had been unnoticed. She was in the secret, the confidante, the-- But Rosalind’s young soul knew no words; her heart seemed to die within her. She could do or hope no more. CHAPTER XVIII.