Despite the changes which years had wrought in him, Giovanna knew him again the moment she set eyes on him, and the same instant a great fear took possession of her. An inarticulate cry broke from her lips; she shrank away from him with averting hands and terror-fraught eyes, and, when she could go no farther, she crouched trembling in a corner of the room. Her face wore the ghastly hue of death. She had never fainted in her life, and she did not now; but all the fibres of her being were stretched to that point of tension which touches the verge of madness. A little more and her brain would have given way. It was a strange mixture of terror that held her powerless, for, although she had at once recognised that this was no shadowy visitant from the tomb, there was about the affair an undoubted element of the supernatural. That her husband had come in the guise of an avenger one glance at his face had been enough to tell her, and surely it could be nothing less than a miracle which had brought him back to life! To Giovanna miracles were far from being the impossibilities which many of us deem them to be. She had grown up in an atmosphere of superstition, and not all the experience of after-life had quite served to eradicate the noxious weeds thus early implanted within her. In the look with which John Clare regarded his wife there was an icy sternness such as might well strike with dread the heart of the unhappy woman. At that moment he bore a striking resemblance to his father, as Sir Gilbert had been before years and trouble had broken him down. For some moments he confronted his wife in silence as she cowered before him like some hunted creature driven to bay. “At last we meet again!” he said, after a time. “You believed that I had died long years ago, but I am here, a living proof to the contrary. From me you have nothing to fear. I come neither to accuse nor to condemn. As you have dealt with the past, so will it deal with you; but certainly it is not for a fallible being such as I to set myself up as your judge.” He spoke slowly and unemotionally, without a trace of passion or the faintest tinge of invective. “I am here on purpose to ask you certain questions,” he resumed, “which I can but trust that you will answer truthfully and to the best of your ability. Will you not be seated?” She did not answer him in words, but drew herself together as it were, and crossing to the opposite side of the room sat down. By this she had recovered from her fright, and her features had settled into a sort of stony hardness which effectually masked whatever emotions might be at work below. John too sat down, but there was nearly the entire width of the room between them.