“You know in your soul,” she replied, “that she detests him; and you know she would sacrifice her life this moment sooner than marry him.” “What, then, do you mean.” he asked, “and why do you thus contradict yourself?” “Good-by, Thomas Gourlay,” she replied. “So far as regards either the past or the future, you will hear nothing further from me to-day; but, mark me, we shall meet again---and we have met before.” “That, certainly, is not true,” he said, “unless it might be accidentally on the highway; but, until this moment, my good woman, I don't remember to have seen your face in my life.” [Illustration: PAGE 350-- How will you be prepared to render an account] She looked toward the sky, and pointing her long, skinny finger upwards, said, “How will you be prepared to render an account of all your deeds and iniquities before Him who will judge you there!” There was a terrible calmness, a dreadful solemnity on her white, ghastly features as she spoke, and pointed to the sky, after which she passed on in silence and took no further notice of the Black Baronet. It is very difficult to describe the singular variety of sensations which her conversation, extraordinary, wild, and mysterious as it was, caused this remarkable man to experience. He knew not what to make of it. One thing was certain, however, and he could not help admitting it to himself, that, during their short and singular dialogue, she had, he knew not how, obtained and exercised an extraordinary ascendency over him. He looked after her, but she was proceeding calmly along, precisely as if they had not spoken. “She is certainly the greatest mystery in the shape of woman,” he said to himself, as he proceeded, “that I have ever yet met--that is, if she be a thing of flesh and blood--for to me she seems to belong more to death and its awful accessories, than to life and its natural reality. How in the devil's name could she have known that I locked that obstinate and undutiful girl up. This is altogether inexplicable, upon principles affecting only the ordinary powers of common humanity. Then she affirmed, prophesied, or what you will, that Lucy and Dunroe will be married--willingly and happily! That certainly is strange, and as agreeable as strange; but I will doubt nothing after the incident of the locking up, so strangely revealed to me too, at a moment when, perhaps, no human being knew it but Lucy and myself. And, what is stranger still, she knows the state of the girl's affections, and that she at present detests Dunroe. Yet, stay, have I not seen her somewhere before? She said so herself. There is a faint impression on me that her face is not altogether unfamiliar to me, but I cannot recall either time or place, and perhaps the impression is a wrong one.” CHAPTER IX. Candor and Dissimulation