When the young man essayed to enter at the kitchen door, he found even that entrance, once hospitably ajar, now closed and bolted. He had scarcely courage to seek admittance boldly. He hovered about, making a faint noise among the rustling herbage and broken stones, enough in that solitude to bring Peggy peering to the kitchen window. Peggy had changed for the worse, like the house. She looked, at last, as if patience and strength were being exhausted out of her: her eyes were peevish and dilated, with dark rings round them; and she looked out with a keen, suspicious glance, as if even confidence in her own powers--that last stronghold--was failing her. When she saw Horace, a softening sentiment came over Peggy's face: she came softly to open the door to him, and brought him into the kitchen, without a word either of welcome or comment. Then she wheeled her own cushioned chair out of the immediate range of the fire, and half led, half forced him into it. "You'll be tired," said Peggy, under her breath, with a tear twinkling bright in the corner of her eye. The surprise overcame her for the moment, and made her forget the sad difference between Susan's brother and Susan herself. And Horace, too, for that instant was not like the Horace of old times. He was subdued by his own thoughts. An involuntary tremor seized him, to think of the dark purpose in his mind, and of why he had obtruded himself into this melancholy-familiar house. He could have supposed that his dreadful secret impulse--the horrible secret instruments he carried about with him--were betrayed and visible to any eye that looked keenly at him. But Peggy did not look keenly; she faltered with a real emotion at the sight of him, and he trembled before her salutation with an intense anguish and remorse, of which he could not have supposed himself capable. Warnings sharp and terrible, of the remorse not to be removed, which should cling for ever to the traces of the deed done; but Horace shut his eyes to that consideration. In another moment he was fully himself--recovered from his rare and strange qualm of feebleness--pleased to find, in Peggy's softened mood, no suspicion of him or his intentions, and resolved to make the most of that unusual grace. "I came to see how you were. How is _he_, Peggy?" said Horace, pointing to the door which opened into the hall. "Speak low!--oh! speak low, for your life!" cried Peggy, in a whisper. "If he knowed I let you into this house he would murder me!" "I should like to see him try," said Horace, grimly, with a smile over the fantastic idea; _that_, indeed, would be a better mode of removing this hindrance than any expedient he could devise. "He hates me so, does he?" he added, with a white smile of enmity. He was glad to hear of it--it spurred him to a passionate emulation in that unnatural art.