er would have been accepted by him, and no thoughts of her would
have perplexed his brain. But her arrival now, her entrance into his
room, and her whole manner, brought back the thoughts which he had
before with tenfold force, in such a way that it was useless to
struggle against them. He felt that there was a mystery, and that the
Earl himself not only knew nothing about it, but could not even
suspect it. But _what_ was the mystery? That he could not, or perhaps
dared not, conjecture. The vague thought which darted across his mind
was one which was madness to entertain. He dismissed it and waited.

At last Mrs. Hart spoke.

"Pardon me, Sir," she said, in a faint, low voice, "for troubling
you. I wished to apologize for intruding upon you in the
morning-room. I did not know you were there."

She spoke abstractedly and wearily. The General felt that it was not
for this that she had thus visited him, but that something more lay
behind. Still he answered her remark as if he took it in good faith.
He hastened to reassure her. It was no intrusion. Was she not the
housekeeper, and was it not her duty to go there? What could she
mean?

At this she looked at him, with a kind of solemn yet eager scrutiny.
"I was afraid," she said, after some hesitation, speaking still in a
dull monotone, whose strangely sorrowful accents were marked and
impressive, and in a voice whose tone was constrained and stiff, but
yet had something in it which deepened the General's perplexity--"I
was afraid that perhaps you might have witnessed some marks of
agitation in me. Pardon me for supposing that you could have troubled
yourself so far as to notice one like me; but--but--I--that is, I am
a little--eccentric; and when I suppose that I am alone that
eccentricity is marked. I did not know that you were in the room, and
so I was thrown off my guard."

Every word of this singular being thrilled through the General. He
looked at her steadily without speaking for some time. He tried to
force his memory to reveal what it was that this woman suggested to
him, or who it was that she had been associated with in that dim and
shadowy past which but lately he had been calling up. Her voice,
too--what was it that it suggested? That voice, in spite of its
constraint, was woeful and sad beyond all description. It was the
voice of suffering and sorrow too deep for tears--that changeless
monotone which makes one think that the words which are spoken are
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