"I haven't seen her since soon after you--you--you--left us," was the reply. "She went away by herself on some important business, and was to have returned to-day to Taunton Square, where I have been staying for the last week by myself. But something happened there that--that frightened and upset me, Max dear, so I came on here, and left word to Aunt Clara where to find me. Ah! here she is." Miss Clara kissed first Kate and then me, after which, turning to her niece, she said: "What was it that frightened you and drove you away from Taunton Square? The rioters?" "No, aunt. I--I--hardly know how to tell you and Max. It was so terrible. It was--it was--the Dumpling." "The Dumpling!" exclaimed Miss Clara and I together. "Yes, the Dumpling," replied Kate, putting her hands before her eyes, as if to shut out some hateful vision. "I wasn't so much afraid of him as of what I saw in his eyes--that awful picture----" "I have something to tell you about him myself," said Miss Clara, quietly. "Something that it is time both you and Max knew. But, first, let us hear your story." "I was sitting alone one evening in the dark in the conservatory," said Kate, "and feeling suddenly cold and frightened--I did not know at what--I put out a hand and switched on the electric light. There, glaring in at me from the window outside, I saw a man's face. It was the man Max called the Dumpling. I recognised him at once by the description. The face was gone almost as I looked, but before it went I saw a picture in its eyes--a picture that seemed to be--that something tells me _was_ true, but is so awful that I can hardly bear to think, still less to speak, of it. But speak of it I must, for I can bear the suspense no longer. "I saw myself as a girl, standing in a church before an altar, being married to this terrible man! Aunt, darling! Tell me it was all a dream, and that it isn't true. It seemed hideously, cruelly true as I saw it; and I know, now, that I have seen him before--that the man is no stranger to me, and that I knew him long ago."