'That appears to me decisive as an assertion of Alice's innocence,' said Martin Gurwood, looking round as Humphrey finished reading. 'To most persons it would be so,' said Statham; 'but Mrs. Calverley, with whom we chiefly have to deal, is not of the ordinary stamp. It will be advisable, however, I think, that we should see her at once, taking this document with us. If Madame Du--if Mrs. Durham's suspicions of Mr. Wetter are well founded, he will not have uttered his bark without being prepared to bite, and it is probably to Mrs. Calverley that he will first address himself.' 'Do you wish me to accompany you?' asked Pauline. 'No,' said Statham, 'I think you had better return home.' 'I think so, too,' said Martin; 'your sister may be expecting you.' Her sister! In her broken condition it was some small comfort to Pauline to hear the acknowledgement of that connection from Martin's lips. CHAPTER IX. HAGAR'S VISIT. In the house in Great Walpole-street there was little change. Things went on in pretty much the same manner as when John Calverley was in the habit of creeping back to his dismal home with sorrow in his heart, or when Pauline sat watching and plotting in the solitude of her chamber. Since her second husband's death Mrs. Calverley seemed to have eschewed even the small amount of society which she had previously kept; the heavy dinner-parties were given up, and the only signs of so-called social intercourse were the fortnightly meetings of a Dorcas Club which was held under Mrs. Calverley's auspices, and at which several elderly ladies of the neighbourhood discussed tea and scandal under the pretence of administering to the necessities of the poor. At other times, the mistress of the house led a life which was eminently solitary and self-contained. She read occasionally, it is true; but when she called at the circulating library, she brought away with her, for her amusement or edification, no story in which, under the guise of fiction, the writer had endeavoured to portray any of the varieties of shifting human nature which had come beneath his ken; no poem glowing with passion and ardour, or sweetly musical with melodious numbers. Hard, strong books of travel through districts with immense unpronounceable names; tales of missionary enterprise set forth in the coldest, baldest, and least-educated style, relieved with frequent interpolations of theological phraseology; reviews which had once been potential, but whose feeble echoes Of former trumpet fanfarons now fell idly on inattentive ears; polemical discussions on religious questions, and priestly biographies--lives of small men, containing no proper precept, setting no worthy example--these were Mrs. Calverley's favourite reading. The butler declared that she read nothing at all; that though these books were brought from Mudie's on the back seat of the carriage, and were afterwards displayed on the drawing-room table, one at a time occupying the post of honour on his