While the back of the tenant of the cottage--an aged woman--was turned, I gazed in the looking-glass, and beheld myself, to all appearance, a young man of medium stature, with brown complexion of exceeding richness, lips of cherry red, arched brows, eyes of unusual brilliancy, and black hair, arranged in a glossy mass beneath a glazed cap. It was the image of a handsome boy of nineteen, with no down on the lip and no beard on the chin. Satisfied with my disguise, and with a half-formed idea floating through my brain, I bent my steps to the isolated house, which I had seen my husband enter the night before. I knocked; the door was opened by a young girl, plainly clad, but of surpassing beauty--evidently not more than sixteen years old. A sunny complexion, blue eyes, masses of glossy brown hair, combined with an expression which mingled voluptuous warmth with stainless innocence. Such was her face. As to her form, although not so tall as mine, it mingled the graceful outlines of the maiden with the ripeness of the woman. CHAPTER X. A SECOND MURDER. She gazed upon me with surprise. Obeying a sudden impulse, I said--"Excuse me, Miss, but I promised to meet _him_ here. You know," with a polite bow and smile, "you know whom I mean?" "Mr. Barton--" she hesitated. "Exactly so; Mr. Barton, my intimate friend, who has confided _all_ to me, and who desired me to meet him here at this hour." "My mother is not at home," hesitated the young girl, "and, in her absence, I do not like to--" "Receive strangers, you were about to add? Well, Miss, I am not a stranger. As the intimate friend of Mr. Barton, who especially desired me to meet him here--" These words seemed to resolve all her doubts. She motioned me to enter, and we passed into a small room, neatly furnished, with the light which came through the curtained windows, shining upon a picture,--the portrait of Walter Howard, my husband. "Capital likeness of Barton," I said, carelessly tapping my switch against my boot. "Yes,--yes," she replied as she took a seat at the opposite end of the sofa,--"but not so handsome." In the course of two hours, in which with a maddened pulse and heaving breast, I waited for the appearance of my husband, I learned from the young girl the following facts:--She was a poor girl, and her mother, with whom she lived, a widow in very moderate circumstances. Her name was Ada Bulmer. Mr. Lawrence Barton (this, of course, was the assumed name of my husband,) was a wealthy gentleman of a noble heart,--he had saved her life in a railroad accident, some months before. He had been unhappy, however, in marriage; was now divorced from a wicked and unfaithful woman; and,--here was the climax,--"and next week we are to be married, and mother, Lawrence, and myself will proceed to Europe directly after our marriage."