‘Her! I shall never forget her!’ She turns to him with quick questioning in her eyes. ‘Is she really your aunt, Mr. Wyndham? It is strange—it is impossible—but I know I have seen her before. In my dreams sometimes, now, I see her. But in my dreams she does not look as she did to-day.’ She shudders, and presses her fingers against her eyes, as if to shut out something. ‘She is lovely there, and kind, and so beautiful; and she calls me “Ellie.” I must be going mad, I think,’ cries she abruptly. ‘A brain diseased sees queer things; and when I saw her in the Rectory garden yesterday, all at once it came to me that I knew her—that I had seen her before. Perhaps’—she goes closer to him, and examines his face with interest, marking every line, as it were, every feature, until Wyndham begins to wish that his parents had granted him better looks, and then, ‘No, no,’ says she, sighing. ‘I thought perhaps it was her likeness to you that made her face seem familiar. But you are not like her. She’—sighing again—‘is very handsome.’ This is a distinct ‘takedown.’ Wyndham, however, bears up nobly. ‘No,’ says he; ‘I am grateful to say that I resemble my father’s family, plain though they may be. The Burkes, of course, were always considered very handsome.’ ‘Burke?’ She looks at him again, and frowns a little, as if again memory is troubling her. ‘The Burkes were——’ ‘My mother was a daughter of Sir John Burke.’ ‘Yes, yes; I see. And the lady who was here just now, Mrs.——’ ‘Prior.’ ‘She was a daughter, too?’ ‘I regret to say so—yes.’ ‘Well, my dreams are wrong,’ says she, as if half to herself. ‘And yet——’ She breaks off. She moves away from him, and in an idle, inconsequent way, pulls at the shrubs and flowers near her. He can see at once that she is thinking, wrestling with the troubled waters of her mind, and there is something in the dignity and sadness of the young figure that appeals to him, and awakens afresh that eager desire to help her that has been his from the first. After awhile she comes back to him, her hands full of the late flowers that she nervously pulls from finger to finger in an unconscious fashion. ‘I can’t live here any longer,’ says she. ‘I should not have come here at all. She has quite shown me that.’ ‘I have already told you that not one word Mrs. Prior said is worthy of another thought.’ He is alluding to Mrs. Prior’s abominable suggestions as to the real meaning of the girl’s presence in the Cottage. ‘Mr. Wyndham,’ says Ella, resting her earnest eyes on his, ‘perhaps I have never let you fully understand how I regard all you have done for me—how grateful I am to you—a mere waif, a nobody. But I am grateful, and, believe me, the one thing that has cut me to the very heart to-day is the thought that I—I’—with poignant meaning—‘should be the one to cause dissension between you and—and—and her.’ ‘Her?’ ‘Yes, yes; she told me.’ ‘She? Who? Her?’ This involved sentence is taken no notice of.