In the midst of her melancholy thoughts she was startled at the sound of a low sigh immediately behind her. She turned hastily, and saw a man standing there, who had entered the room so silently that, in her abstraction, she had not heard him. He was now standing about half-way between her and the door, and his eyes were fixed upon her with something of that same earnest scrutiny which she had already observed in the gaze of Mrs. Dunbar. One glance at this man was sufficient to show her that it was no servant, and that it could be no other than Wiggins himself. He was not a man, however, who could be dismissed with a glance. There was something in him which compelled a further survey, and Edith found herself filled with a certain indefinable wonder as she looked at him. His eyes were fixed on her; her eyes were fixed on him; and they both looked upon each other in silence. He was a man who might once have been tall, but now was stooping so that his original height was concealed. He was plainly dressed, and his coat of some thin black stuff hung loosely about him. He wore slippers, which served to account for his noiseless entrance. Yet it was not things like these that Edith noticed at that time, but rather the face that now appeared before her. It was a face which is only met with once in a lifetime?--a face which had such an expression that the beholder could only feel baffled. It was the face of one who might be the oldest of men, so snow-white was the hair, so deep were the lines that were graven upon it. His cheek-bones were prominent, his mouth was concealed by a huge gray mustache, and his cheeks were sunken, while his forehead projected, and was fringed with heavy eyebrows, from behind which his dark eyes glowed with a sort of gloomy lustre from cavernous depths. Over his whole face there was one pervading expression that was more than despondency, and near akin to despair. It was the expression of a man whose life had been a series of disheartening failures, or of one who had sinned deeply, or of one who had suffered unusual and protracted anguish of soul, or of one who has been long a prey to that form of madness which takes the form of melancholy. So this might mean a ruined life, or it might mean madness, or it might be the stamp of sorrow, or it might be the handwriting of remorse. Whatever it was could certainly not be gathered from one survey, or from many, nor, indeed, could it be known for certain at all without this man's confession. [Illustration: “AND THIS WAS WIGGINS!”] For in addition to this mysterious expression there was another, which was combined with it so closely that it seemed to throw conjecture still further off the track and bewilder the gazer. This was a certain air of patient and incessant vigilance, a look-out upon the world as from behind an outpost of danger, the hunted look of the criminal who fears detection, or the never-ending watchfulness of the uneasy conscience.