quivering with emotion, hearing Geoff’s voice in her ears, not knowing a word he said. What had Geoff to do with it--young Geoff, to whom nothing had ever happened? She smiled vaguely to herself to think that the boy could think he knew. How was he to know?--he was not of that time. But all the people in the road, and the very water itself, and the villages and houses, seemed to ask her, Was it true? This was all the evidence on the subject from which a judgment could be formed. Randolph Musgrave (who told no one) had seen, in his own words, a something, a some one, whose face he did not see, but who suggested John to him so strongly that his very heart seemed to stop beating--then disappeared. And Lady Stanton from the window of the carriage, driving past, saw a face, which was John Musgrave’s face grown older and worn, with hair that was slightly grey, instead of the brown curls of former years, and which disappeared too in the twinkling of an eye, and being searched for, could be found no more. What was it?--an apparition conjured up by their interest or their fears? or John Musgrave, in his own person, come home? CHAPTER XXIX. NELLO’S JOURNEY. Randolph Musgrave drove from the door of his father’s house with a sigh of relief, yet of anxiety. He had not done what he meant to do, and affairs were more critical than when he went to Penninghame a few weeks before; but it was something at least to be out of the troubled atmosphere, and he had arranged in his own mind what he should do, which was in its way a gain, as soon as the breath was out of the old man’s body,--but when would that be? It was not to be desired, Randolph said to himself piously, that his father should linger long; his life was neither of use nor comfort to any one, and no pleasure, no advantage to himself. To lie there speechless, motionless, as much shut out of all human intercourse as if he were already in his coffin--what could any one desire but that, as soon as might be, it should come to an end?