Mrs. Trelane, with her skirts gathered up to make no sound, fled swiftly from the room. The house was quite quiet, the servants all down-stairs; the woman who had been young and radiant as she came in, slipped out of that horrible house wan as the man up-stairs. She dared not hurry away, though the early darkness of London was growing apace, and she could not if she had tried, for her feet would scarcely carry her. Suddenly she stopped short, for quick steps came behind her. Had any one seen her go out? Had any one found that which lay up-stairs? She turned, ready to drop. “Ismay!” The cry was hysterical, uncontrollable, for it was Ismay hurrying after her. “What are you here for?” “Why not? I was going for a walk, and I came this way. What made you so quick? You have not been there five minutes--you can’t have.” Her mother clutched her by the arm fiercely and whispered in her ear. “Don’t stop like this! walk on,” the girl said, very low, yet with authority. “Did any one see you? You’re sure there was no one there?” “No one.” Mrs. Trelane’s teeth were chattering. “Is there anything in the room that might get you into trouble? Think, quick!” “Oh, my photograph. It’s there on the table.” What a fool she had been not to bring it. “Do the servants know you? Does any one know he was a friend of yours?” “No; no one! I was very careful. I did not want my past to come up--if he married me.” The words were gasped out under her breath; for once terror was too much for her. “You don’t think they’ll bring me into it, Ismay?” Ismay turned round. “Go back,” she said, “quick, and get that photograph. It’s risky, but it’s your only chance. Don’t you see that you might be suspected through it?” “I can’t,” but she had turned, too. “You must! I’ll wait outside.” She almost pulled the elder woman back to the house she had but just left; with a steady hand she fitted in the latch-key her mother could not turn. Sick with fright, but desperate, she pushed her gently into the dim hall and closed the door softly behind her. Helen Trelane, like a guilty thing, crept back to that room of horror, and her daughter strolled quietly along outside in terror. Suppose she had done just the wrong thing? Ismay shivered in her thin coat, and then turned back in time to see what made her blood thicken with a worse chill than the November air. A hansom cab was stopping at Abbotsford’s door. A tall man in a loose overcoat, that was like every other fashionable overcoat in London, jumped out and put his hand in his pocket to pay his fare. He was going into the house! He would find her mother, find Abbotsford; he would find out, perhaps, more! With a horrible clearness those words of her own mother’s came back to the girl. “I will pay him for it all if I kill him.”