"You are raving," said the stranger, keeping his awakened eyes fixed upon Vincent; "but this is easily settled. I returned from the East only yesterday. I don't know you. What was that you said about Lady--Lady--what lady? Come in: and my name?--my name has been unheard in this country, so far as I know, for ten years. Lady----?--come in and explain what you mean." The two stood together confronting each other in the little parlour of the house, where the striped jacket quickly and humbly lighted the gas. Vincent's face, haggard with misery and want of rest, looked wild in that sudden light. The stranger stood opposite him, leaning forward with a strange eagerness and inquiry. He did not care for Vincent's anxiety, who was a stranger to him; he cared only to hear again that name--Lady----? He had heard it already, or he would have been less curious; he wanted to understand this wonderful message wafted to him out of his old life. What did it matter to Herbert Fordham, used to the danger of the deserts and mountains, whether it was a maniac who brought this chance seed of a new existence to his wondering heart? "A man called Fordham has gone into my mother's house," said Vincent, fixing his eyes upon those keen but visionary orbs which were fixed on him--"and won the love of my sister. She wrote to him here--to this house; yesterday he carried her away, to her shame and destruction. Answer me," cried the young man, making another fierce step forward, growing hoarse with passion, and clenching his hands in involuntary rage--"was it you?" "There are other men called Fordham in existence besides me," cried the stranger, with a little irritation; then seizing his loose coat by its pockets, he shook out, with a sudden impatient motion, a cloud of letters from these receptacles. "Because you seem in great excitement and distress, and yet are not, as far as I can judge," said Mr. Fordham, with another glance at Vincent, "mad, I will take pains to satisfy you. Look at my letters; their dates and post-marks will convince you that what you say is simply impossible, for that I was not here."