The fact was that Miss Marjoribanks had found a shadowy figure in black in the corner of one of the sofas when she came into the drawing-room--a-figure with a veil down, and a large shawl, and a tremulous air. It was very seldom that Mrs Mortimer took courage to visit her young patroness; and to go out at night, except sometimes to Salem Chapel when there was a meeting, and when the timid woman represented to herself that it was her duty, was a thing unknown to her. But yet, nevertheless, it was Mrs Mortimer who sat waiting for Lucilla. They had not met since that momentous interview in which the widow revealed her history to Miss Marjoribanks's sympathetic ears, and the poor woman had been able to bear no longer the solitude of her cottage, and her garden-walls, and her little pupils, and Mary Jane. To know that something was going on outside that concerned her--to hear the waves, as it were, beating round the walls of her prison, and never to have even so much as a peep at them, what they were about, if the tide was beginning to turn, or the wind to change, or the lifeboat to appear--was more than Mrs Mortimer, even with all her training to patience, could put up with; and accordingly she had made a frantic rush out, under cover of night, to see if there was anything to see, and hear if there was anything to hear. "You don't know how dreadful it is to keep staring at the walls all day and never see any change," said the widow. "It is very stupid and silly, but you know I cannot help it. I get to fancy always that something wonderful must be going on on the other side." "That is because you don't go out enough," said Lucilla. "You know how often I have said you should go out once every day; and then you would see that everything outside was very much the same as everything within." "Oh, Lucilla! don't say so," said Mrs Mortimer; "and besides, _he_ has been again, and I could see you had been saying something to him. He spoke as if I understood it all when I did not understand a word of it; and he spoke of him, you know, and was quite solemn, and warned me to think well of it, and not do anything rash--as if I had anything to think about, or was going to do anything! Tell me what you said to him, Lucilla; for I am sure, by the way he spoke, he must have taken him for himself, and perhaps you for me." "Who did he take for himself, I wonder?" said Lucilla. "As for you and me, dear Mrs Mortimer, we are so different that he could never take us for each other, whatever the circumstances might be."