He held his hand pressed convulsively to his side, and stood watching the grey, stalwart figure now almost out of sight. His face was white and strained--some symptoms of yesterday’s faintness seemed to be suggested by those wan cheeks and over bright eyes. Even I, naturally unsympathetic and callous, was moved. I laid my hand upon his shoulders. “It is over and finished, you say, this dark chapter,” I whispered, softly. “I would not think of it.” He looked at me for a moment in silence. The grey pallor still lingered in his thin, sunken cheeks, and his eyes were like cold fires. It was a face which might well guard its own secrets. I looked into it, and felt a vague sense of trouble stirring within me. Was that chapter of his life turned over and done with forever? Was that secret at which he had hinted, and the knowledge of which lay between these two, wholly of the past, or was it a live thing? I could not tell. My father was fast becoming the enigma of my life. “I cannot cease to think about it,” he said, slowly. “I shall never cease to think about it until--until----” “Until when?” I whispered. “Until the end,” he cried, hoarsely--”until the end, and God grant that it may not be long.” CHAPTER IV OUR MYSTERIOUS NEIGHBORS This was a faithful and exact account of my meeting with the first of those two of our neighbors who seemed, according to Lady Naselton’s report, to remain entirely outside the ordinary society of the place. Curiously enough, my meeting with the second one occurred on the very next afternoon. We came face to face at a turning in the wood within a few yards of her odd little house, and the surprise of it almost took my breath away. Could this be the woman condemned to isolation by a whole neighborhood--the woman on whose shoulders lay the burden of Bruce Deville’s profligacy? I looked into the clear, dark eyes which met mine without any shadow of embarrassment--returning in some measure the keen interest of my own scrutiny--and the thing seemed impossible. She spoke to me graciously, and as though to do so were quite a matter of course. Her voice completed my subjugation. One may so often be deceived by faces, but the voice seems an infallible test. “There is going to be a terrible storm,” she said. “Won’t you come in for a few minutes? You will scarcely be able to get home, and these trees are not safe.” Even while she was speaking the big rain drops began to fall. I gathered up my skirts, and hurried along by her side. “It is very good of you,” I said, breathlessly. “I am dreadfully afraid of a thunderstorm.”