"Something is about to happen to
me; something has drawn me with purpose to this house."

I felt awe-struck. Would he guess next what that something was?

"At eleven o'clock," he went on, with the abstracted air of one
recalling an experience, "I felt a pang shoot through my breast. I had
been looking steadfastly at these walls, and somewhere about the
building a light seemed to go out, for a pall of darkness suddenly
settled upon it, simultaneously with the cessation of that imaginary cry
which had hitherto detained me. Where was that light, Mrs. Truax, and
what has happened here that I should feel myself called upon to cross
this threshold to-night?"

I did not answer at once, for I was trembling. Was I to be subjected to
another such an ordeal as I had experienced earlier in the evening and
be forced to prepare, by such means as lay in my power, a much abused
man for a most dreadful revelation? It began to look so.

"What has called me here?" he repeated. "Danger to her or death to him?
They are thousands of miles away, and Tamworth could not have yet
reached them, but peril of some deadly nature menaces them, I know. A
stroke has gone home to him or her, and it is in this place I am to
learn it; is it not so, Mrs. Truax?"

"Perhaps," I tremblingly assented. "There is a gentleman here from
France who may be able to tell you something of the man and the woman
you mean. Would it affect you very much to hear disastrous news of
them?"

"I cannot say," he answered; "it should not. Mr. Tamworth tells me that
he has acquainted you with the story of my life. Do you think I should
feel overwhelmed at any retribution following a crime that was committed
almost as much against me as against the pure and noble being who was
the visible sufferer?"

"I shrink from answering," I returned; "the human heart is a curious
thing. If he alone were to suffer--"

"Ah, he!" was the bitter ejaculation.

"Or if she," I proceeded, "were bound by no ties appealing to the
sympathies! But she is a mother--"

"Good God!"

I had not thought it would affect him so, and stood appalled.

"A mother!" he repeated; "she! she! the tigress, the heartless one, with
no more soul than the naked dagger I should have plunged into her breast
and did not! Great Heaven! and this child has lived, I suppose; is
grown up and--and--"

"Is the sweetest, purest, most unworldly of beautiful women that these
eyes have ever rested upon."

I thought he w