Dr. Pomeroy came home late one evening in December, 1858. Hester had long been in bed, and Eleanor, as was her habit, had waited up for his return. Some weeks had now elapsed since her discovery of his deception, but hope had not yet died out, nor had all her confidence been lost in that affection for her which she believed underlay all the impropriety of his treatment. So far, except in the one particular, he had treated her with almost unvarying kindness; and while that pleasant status existed and hope had yet a little point for the clinging of her tenacious fingers, it was not in the nature of the young girl to despair. She met him at the door, as she had done on so many previous occasions, assisted him to divest himself of the rough wrappers by which he had been sheltered from the winter wind, and when at last he dropped into his cushioned chair before the grate, which had been kept broadly aglow to minister to his comfort, took her place half by his side and half at his feet. Perhaps there was some malevolent spirit who on that occasion, before the glow of the winter fire, once more brought to the lips of the poor girl that subject always lying so near her heart--marriage. She mentioned the word, and for the first time since he had given her shelter under his roof, Philip Pomeroy hurled an oath at her. Perhaps he had been taking wine somewhat too freely, in one of the tempting supper-rooms of the city; or some other cause may have disturbed his equanimity and brought out the truth of his worst nature. The reply of Eleanor Hill to this was the not unnatural one of a burst of tears, and that outburst may have maddened him still more. The truth came at last, in all its black, bitter, naked deformity: "Eleanor, you have made a fool of yourself long enough! No more of this whining, or it will be the worse for you! When _I_ marry _you_, I shall be very nearly out of business; and if you have not had judgment enough to know that fact before, so much the worse for your common sense!" Eleanor Hill staggered up from her chair and cast one glance full into the face of her destroyer. Her eyes could read the expression that it bore, then, if they had never before attained the same power. There was neither the smile of reckless pleasantry nor the unbent lines of partial pity for suffering, upon that face. All was cold, hard, determined, cruel earnest, and the victim read at last aright what she should have been able to decipher more than two years before. And never the life of a dangerous infant heir went out beneath the choking fingers of a hired murderer, at midnight and in silence in one of the thick vaulted chambers of the Tower, more suddenly or more effectually than at that moment the last honorable hope of Eleanor Hill expired, strangled by the hand of that "guardian" who had promised beside a dying bed that he would shield and protect her as his own child!