It made them, the others, exchange a look of their own. Then she smiled. "Oh, well, if they think so----!" "You at least don't? You're like my wife--which indeed, I remember," Gedge added, "is a similarity I expressed a year ago the wish for! At any rate I frighten _her_." The young husband, with an "Ah wives are terrible!" smoothed it over, and their visit would have failed of further excuse had not at this instant a movement at the other end of the room suddenly engaged them. The evening had so nearly closed in, though Gedge, in the course of their talk, had lighted the lamp nearest them, that they had not distinguished, in connexion with the opening of the door of communication to the warden's lodge, the appearance of another person, an eager woman who in her impatience had barely paused before advancing. Mrs. Gedge--her identity took but a few seconds to become vivid--was upon them, and she had not been too late for Mr. Hayes's last remark. Gedge saw at once that she had come with news; no need even, for that certitude, of her quick retort to the words in the air--"You may say as well, sir, that they're often, poor wives, terrified!" She knew nothing of the friends whom, at so unnatural an hour, he was showing about; but there was no livelier sign for him that this didn't matter than the possibility with which she intensely charged her "Grant-Jackson, to see you at once!"--letting it, so to speak, fly in his face. "He has been with you?" "Only a minute--he's there. But it's you he wants to see." He looked at the others. "And what does he want, dear?" "God knows! There it is. It's his horrid hour--it _was_ that other time." She had nervously turned to the others, overflowing to them, in her dismay, for all their strangeness--quite, as he said to himself, like a woman of the people. She was the bareheaded good wife talking in the street about the row in the house, and it was in this character that he instantly introduced her: "My dear doubting wife, who will do her best to entertain you while I wait upon our friend." And he explained to her as he could his now protesting companions--"Mr. and Mrs. Hayes of New York, who have been here before." He knew, without knowing why, that her announcement chilled him; he failed at least to see why it should chill him so much. His good friends had themselves been visibly affected by it, and heaven knew that the depths of brooding fancy in him were easily stirred by contact. If they had wanted a crisis they accordingly had found one, albeit they had already asked leave to retire before it. This he wouldn't have. "Ah no, you must really see!" "But we shan't be able to bear it, you know," said the young woman, "if it _is_ to turn you out." Her crudity attested her sincerity, and it was the latter, doubtless, that instantly held Mrs. Gedge. "It _is_ to turn us out." "Has he told you that, madam?" Mr. Hayes inquired of her--it being wondrous how the breath of doom had drawn them together.