"Ah! how can you tell that?" she said, sharply, looking at him in the streak of lamplight. "But to tell the truth," she continued, "I did actually go to hear you, and to look at other people's faces, just to see whether the world at large--so far as that exists in Carlingford--was like what it used to be; and if I confess I saw something there more interesting than the lecture, I say no more than the lecturer could agree in, Mr. Vincent. You, too, saw something that made you forget the vexed question of Church and State." "Tell me," said Vincent, with an earnestness he was himself surprised at, "who was that man?" His companion started as if she had received a blow, turned round upon him with a glance in her dark eyes such as he had never seen there before, and in a sudden momentary passion drew her breath hard, and stopped short on the way. But the spark of intense and passionate emotion was as shortlived as it was vivid. "I do not suppose he is anything to interest you," she answered the next moment, with a movement of her thin mouth, letting the hands that she had clasped together drop to her side. "Nay, make yourself quite easy; he is not a lover of my lady's. He is only a near relation:--and," she continued, lingering on the words with a force of subdued scorn and rage, which Vincent dimly apprehended, but could not understand, "a very fascinating fine gentleman--a man who can twist a woman round his fingers when he likes, and break all her heartstrings--if she has any--so daintily afterwards, that it would be a pleasure to see him do it. Ah, a wonderful man!" "You know him then? I saw you knew him," said the young man, surprised and disturbed, thrusting the first commonplace words he could think of into the silence, which seemed to tingle with the restrained meaning of this brief speech. "I don't think we are lucky in choosing our subjects to-night," said the strange woman. "How about the ladies in Lonsdale, Mr. Vincent? They don't keep a school? I am glad they don't keep a school. Teaching, you know, unless when one has a vocation for it, as you had a few weeks ago, is uphill work. I am sorry to see you are not so sure about your work as you were then. Your sister is pretty, I suppose? and does your mother take great care of her and keep her out of harm's way? Lambs have a silly faculty of running directly in the wolf's road. Why don't you take a holiday and go to see them, or have them here to live with you?" "You know something about them," said Vincent, alarmed. "What has happened?--tell me. It will be the greatest kindness to say it out at once."