Mamma started. I looked with all my eyes; little more than a hundred yards interposed, but the shadow was so intense, and the effect of the faint reflected light so odd and puzzling, that I could be certain of nothing, but that the man stood very erect, and was tall and powerfully built. Lady Lorrimer was too much absorbed in her inspection to offer me her glasses, which I was longing to borrow, but for which I could not well ask, and so we sailed slowly by, and the hill that flanked the valley gradually glided between us and the pier, and the figure disappeared from view. Lady Lorrimer, lowering her glasses, said: "I can't say positively, but I'm very nearly certain it was he." Mamma said nothing, but was looking pale, and during the rest of our sail seemed absent and uncomfortable, if not unhappy. CHAPTER XXXIII. NOTICE TO QUIT. We drank tea with Lady Lorrimer. Mamma continued very silent, and I think she had been crying in her room. "They can't tell me here whether Harry has arrived or not," said Lady Lorrimer. "He might have returned by the Dardale Road, and if so, he would not have passed through Golden Friars, so it is doubtful. But I'm pretty sure that was he." "I wish I were sure of that," said mamma. "Well, I don't know," said Lady Lorrimer, "what to advise. I was just going to say it might be a wise thing if you were to make up your mind to see him, and to beard the lion in his den." "No," said mamma; "if you mean to meet him and speak to him, I could not do that. I shall never see him again--nothing but pain could come of it; and he would not see me, and he ought not to see me; and he ought not to forgive me--never!" "Well, dear, I can't deny it, you did use him very ill. And he is, and always was, a fierce and implacable enemy," answered Lady Lorrimer. "I fancied, perhaps, if he did see you, the old chord might be touched again, and yield something of its old tone on an ear saddened by time. But I daresay you are right. It was a Quixotic inspiration, and might have led to disaster; more probably, indeed, than to victory." "I am quite sure of that--in fact, I know it," said mamma. And there followed a silence. "I sometimes think, Mabel--I was thinking so all this evening," said Lady Lorrimer, "it might have been happier for us if we had never left this lonely place. We might have been happier if we had been born under harder conditions; the power of doing what pleases us best leads us so often into sorrow." Another silence followed. Mamma was looking over her shoulder, sadly, through the window at the familiar view of lake and mountain, indolently listening.