Alison met the inevitable with a kind of cold, white calm. Her very flesh shrank from the thought of meeting Burns, of being near him and breathing the same air. Now she must not only go to his house, but in all probability enter it, doing that which, to anyone not acquainted with the intricacies of the affair and her own obscure part in it, was, on the face of it, open to the gravest misconstruction. Should Herries know of it—what then? But a kind of despair had come to Alison on this point. She must do what she had to do; it was all a ghastly mistake, a growing and intolerable injustice, but she must blunder on with it now. She was the same Alison, and in the same mood, who had desperately promised in Jacky’s twilight nursery, weeks ago, to marry Mr. Cheape because duty drove her to it, and she saw no other way. It was agreed that she should wait till nearly dusk before setting out, and it was, perhaps, five or six o’clock before she left the house. She hurried through the familiar streets, choosing the obscurer ones, and keeping in the shadow—haunted by a sense of the guilt which was not hers. She stood at last before the odiously familiar door in St. James’s Square, and knocked. It was opened to her by Nicol, and Alison’s flesh crept, for she loathed the man, and feared him now—she knew not why. ’Is Mr. Burns within?’ she asked in a low voice. Nicol looked her up and down with an indescribable insolence. ’No, mistress,’ he said, ’he’s not.’ ’Will he be in soon?’ Alison forced herself to ask. ’Are you that anxious to see him?’ said Nicol, with a leer. Alison drew herself up, with a passionate scorn, though she trembled in every limb. ’I have important business with Mr. Burns,’ she faltered, ’and desire an interview.’ ’Ay, oh, ay, I understand!’ said Nicol. ’Well, mistress, come in and wait. Rob’s door is never closed to bonny lasses.’ He held the door wide. Behind his uncouth figure opened a vista of dingy passage, ending in a stair. Alison hesitated, half drew back; to cross that threshold was horrible to her; it seemed to put her in the power of men—of bad men. She held her hand to her heart—it fluttered so—and cast a longing look down the empty street. Oh, for some help! But no help came. ’If there is some room where I could wait—alone’ ... she began, with an unlucky inflection on the last word, which Nicol’s ear caught, and bitterly resented. ’Oh, ay, there’s a room where you can be private,’ answered Nicol, with suspicious blandness. ’Come up the stair.’ He led the way, and Alison followed in the close, malodorous darkness. Burns occupied two rooms on the first floor of the house, a parlour and sleeping-closet communicating. It was into the former of these that Nicol ushered Alison—a disorderly and ill-kept room, with a bottle and glasses on the table, and articles of a man’s wearing apparel strewn about upon the chairs and floor.