“Then show him in to Miss Mortimer?” cried Aunt Milly with a gasp over the words. “You shouldn’t have spoken so, my dear,” she said as soon as he was gone, “servants have nothing to do with our private affairs. Dear, dear, it’s surely very cold. It’s the storm come on so suddenly--a hail-storm, I declare. Don’t you feel, Milly, how cold the air has grown?” I made no answer, and she did not expect any. She went up close to the library door, and stood there as if listening, shivering now and then with the nervous chill of her own emotion. We heard the drawing-room door open and shut,--then silence, silence, something positive, not merely an absence of sound. I stood by the table trembling, fancying I saw the stranger pass, as if through a picture, up that empty-seeming room, with the cold chill daylight spying in, and the motionless, conscious creature who feared and yet defied him lurking behind that screen. Would she speak to him? If she did it would not be with that stifled whispering voice. What communication would pass between them? Would the old walls groan with some dark secret fatal to their honour? The very air tingled round us in the dead calm of the house. Surely it never was so noiseless before. As for Aunt Milly, she stood before me shivering at the door, sometimes putting her hand upon the lock, then drawing back in irresolute terror. This lasted for some time, though most likely for not half so long as I imagined it did; then she turned to me, wringing her hands and bursting out into tears and cries. “I cannot leave her alone any longer, Milly,” she said in broken words. “I cannot desert her in time of need;” and made as though she would leave the room, and then returned and sank into a chair and hid her face in her hands. She was entirely overwhelmed and broken down. All I could do for her, was to get a shawl which hung over the sofa, and wrap it round her. All this had been too much for her strength. In the midst of our suspense, Harry came suddenly in upon us. The sound of his honest frank step ringing into the library, startled me back to life again, and even Aunt Milly lifted up her blanched face expecting him to bring some news. Harry looked startled and curious, and did not grow less so as he looked at our agitated faces. “What is the matter, Milly?” he cried. “I passed the drawing-room windows just now, and looked in thinking to see you. Miss Mortimer was standing at a table looking over some papers, and by her side was Luigi, talking very earnestly. By Jove! to see them standing there you would have said they were mother and son.” At these words Aunt Milly lifted up her head, listening,--but Harry’s expression did not seem to strike her; she held up her finger and cried “Hark!”