She stopped--words would serve her no further--and just then there came a summons to the locked door. Vincent dropped her arm, and she recoiled from him with an involuntary movement; unawares she clasped her thin hands and gave one wild look into his face. Not even now could she tell what he was going to do, this dreadful arbiter of fate. The key, as he turned it in the door, rang in her ears like thunder; and his hand trembled as he set open the entrance of the needlewoman's mean apartment. On the threshold stood no vulgar messenger of fate, but a bright vision, sad, yet sweeter than anything else in earth or almost in heaven to Vincent. He fell back without saying anything before the startled look of that beautiful face. He let in, not law and justice, but love and pity, to this miserable room. "Oh, Rachel! where have you been? have you seen him? have you heard of him? where have you been?" cried the visitor, going up to the pallid woman, whose eyes were still fixed on Vincent. Mrs. Hilyard could not speak. She dropped upon her knees by the table, shivering and crouching like a stricken creature. She leaned her head upon the hymn-book which lay there so strangely at variance with everything else around it. Pale with fright and horror, Lady Western appealed to Vincent. "She is ill, she is fainting--oh, Mr. Vincent, what have you been saying to her? She was not to blame," cried the new-comer, in her ignorance. Vincent attempted no reply, offered no help. In his heart he could have snatched away those beautiful hands which embraced and comforted his "prisoner," thus rescued out of his grasp. It was hard to see her touch that guilty conscious woman whom his own heart refused to pity. He stood by looking on, watching her still; the instinct of vengeance had been awakened within him. He was reluctant to let her go. "You have been saying something to her," said Lady Western, with tears in her eyes; "and how could she be to blame? Rachel! Oh, I wonder, I wonder if she loved him after all?" cried the beautiful creature, in the bewilderment of her innocence and ignorance. She stood bending over the kneeling figure, troubled, perplexed almost more than her strange sister-in-law had ever yet perplexed her. She could not account for this extraordinary access of agitation. It was nohow explainable, except upon that supposition which opened at once the warmest sympathies of the gentle young woman's heart.