round once more to the immediate contact in which he stood--to Fordham, in whose name his sister's life had been shipwrecked, and by whom, as he divined with cruel foresight, his own hopeless love and dreams were to be made an end of. Well! what better could they come to? but it was hard to think of him, with his patrician looks, his negligent grace, his conscious superiority, and to submit to accept assistance from him even in his sorest need. These thoughts were in his mind when Mr. Fordham hastily re-entered the room. A thrill of excitement now was in the long, lightly-falling step, which already Vincent, with the keen ear of rivalry almost as quick as that of love, could recognise as it approached. The stranger was disturbed out of his composure. He shut the door and came up to the young man, who rose to meet him, with a certain excited repugnance and attraction much like Vincent's own feelings. "You are quite right," he said, hastily; "I find letters have been coming here for some months, addressed as if to me, which Mildmay has had. The man of the house is absent, or I should never have heard of it. I don't know what injury he may have done _you_; but this is an insult I don't forgive. Stop! I have every reason to believe that he has gone," said Fordham, growing darkly red, "to a house of mine, to confirm this slander upon me. To prove that I am innocent of all share of it--I don't mean to you--you believe me, I presume?" he said, with a haughty sudden pause, looking straight in Vincent's face--"I will go----" Here Mr. Fordham stopped again, and once more looked at Vincent with that indescribable mixture of curiosity, dislike, resentment, and interest, which the eyes of the young Nonconformist repaid him fully,--"with you--if you choose. At all events, I will go to-night--to Fordham, where the scoundrel is. I cannot permit it to be believed for an hour that it is I who have done this villany. The lady you mentioned, I presume, knows?"--he added, sharply--"knows what has happened, and whom you suspect? This must be set right at once. If you choose, we can go together." "Where is the place?" asked Vincent, without any answer to this proposition. Fordham looked at him with a certain haughty offence: he had made the offer as though it were a very disagreeable expedient, but resented instantly the tacit neglect of it shown by his companion.