"The fact is," he said, following her hand with his eyes, "that my mother came up to inquire about some one called Fordham, in whom she is interested. Lady Western knows him," said Vincent, abruptly, looking in Mrs. Hilyard's face. "Lady Western knows him. You perceive that she has written to ask me about him this morning. Yes," said Mrs. Hilyard, looking at the young man, not without a shade of compassion. "You are quite right in your conclusions; poor Alice and he _were_ in love with each other before she married Sir Joseph. He has not been heard of for a long time. What do you want to know, and how is it he has showed himself now?" "It is for Susan's sake," cried Mrs. Vincent, interposing; "oh, Mrs. Hilyard, you will feel for me better than any one--my only daughter! I got an anonymous letter the night before I left. I am so flurried, I almost forget what night it was--Tuesday night--which arrived when my dear child was out. I never kept anything from her in all her life, and to conceal it was dreadful--and how we got through that night----" "Mother, the details are surely not necessary now," said her impatient son. "We want to know what are this man's antecedents and his character--that is all," he added, with irrestrainable bitterness. Mrs. Hilyard took up her work, and pinned the long coarse seam to her knee. "Mrs. Vincent will tell me herself," she said, looking straight at him with her amused look. Of all her strange peculiarities, the faculty of amusement was the strangest. Intense restrained passion, anxiety of the most desperate kind, a wild will which would pause at nothing, all blended with and left room for this unfailing perception of any ludicrous possibility. Vincent got up hastily, and, going to the window, looked out upon the dismal prospect of Salem, throwing its shabby shadow upon those dreary graves. Instinctively he looked for the spot where that conversation must have been held which he had overheard from the vestry window; it came most strongly to his mind at that moment. As his mother went through her story, how Mr. Fordham had come accidentally to the house--how gradually they had admitted him to their friendship--how, at last, Susan and he had become engaged to each other--her son stood at the window, following in his mind all the events of that evening, which looked so long ago, yet was only two or three evenings back. He recalled to himself his rush to the telegraph office; and again, with a sharp stir of opposition and enmity, recalled, clear as a picture, the railway-carriage just starting, the flash of light inside, the face so clearly evident against the vacant cushions. What had he to do with that face, with its eagle outline and scanty long locks? Somehow, in the meshes of fate he felt himself so involved that it was impossible to forget this man. He came and took his seat again with his mind full of that recollection. The story had come to a pause, and Mrs. Hilyard sat