esired
to say, but in words carefully chosen: "Rachel, I've never told you
that Louis Fores began life as a bank clerk, and was dismissed
for stealing money. And even since then his conduct has not been
blameless." Mrs. Maldon had stopped because she could not find the
form of words which would permit her to impart to her paid companion
this information about her grand-nephew. Mrs. Maldon, when the moment
for utterance came, had discovered that she simply could not do it,
and all her conscientious regard for Rachel and all her sense of duty
were not enough to make her do it. So that Rachel, unsuspectingly, had
been spared a tremendous emotional crisis. By this time she had grown
nearly accustomed to the fact of the disappearance of the money. She
had completely recovered from the hysteria caused by old Batchgrew's
attack, and was, indeed, in the supervening calm, very much ashamed of
it.

She meant to doze, having firmly declined the suggestion of Mrs. Tams
that she should go to bed at seven o'clock, and she was just dropping
the paper when a tap on the window startled her. She looked in alarm
at the window, where the position of one of the blinds proved the
correctness of Mrs. Maldon's secret theory that if Mrs. Maldon did
not keep a personal watch on the blinds they would never be drawn
properly. Eight inches of black pane showed, and behind that dark
transparency something vague and pale. She knew it must be the hand of
Louis Fores that had tapped, and she could feel her heart beating.
She flew on tiptoe to the front door, and cautiously opened it. At
the same moment Louis sprang from the narrow space between the street
railings and the bow window on to the steps. He raised his hat with
the utmost grace.

"I saw your head over the arm of the Chesterfield," he said in a
cheerful, natural low voice. "So I tapped on the glass. I thought if
I knocked at the door I might waken the old lady. How are things
to-night?"

In those few words he perfectly explained his manner of announcing
himself, endowing it with the highest propriety. Rachel's misgivings
were soothed in an instant. Her chief emotion was an ecstatic
pride--because he had come, because he could not keep away, because
she had known that he would come, that he must come. And in fact was
it not his duty to come? Quietly he came into the hall, quietly she
closed the door, and when they were shut up together in the parlour
they both spoke in hushed voices, lest