g will be on me forever after this, the horrible dread
that if I do not cry out in my waking moments I may unconsciously do so
in my sleeping ones. I know it was mad of me to do this thing, to take
this dreadful risk in coming here; but I couldn't sleep until I saw you,
until I had told you that I know! I think I knew it yesterday; I think I
foresaw it when you wrote and warned me, and if I had not been a coward,
if fate had not sent him to Clavering Close last night and let me see
that it was written he should come back into my life again----"

Her voice snapped off and failed her for an instant, sinking down to a
dull, whimpering sound like the wail of an animal that is beaten; then
it came back to her and she spoke again.

"I knew you would kill him, I knew that you would!" she said in that
horrible, excited whisper. "I felt it in my soul the moment he looked up
and recognized me, and I knew what I--what you--had to dread. It was
that that drove me out on the Common. I wanted to find you; I wanted to
stop you. But it was too late, too late! I know that you did it for my
sake as much as for your own, but the thought of the thing, the
_thought_ of it! If anything can palliate that, if God can in any way
excuse it, it will be that you got the letters; that you tore them up,
burnt them, did anything in the world but let them fall into that woman
Margot's hands! Oh, did you? I cannot sleep until I know. For if you did
not----"

Here her voice snapped again, but for quite another reason this time, a
reason which made Cleek groan inwardly.

Far down at the other end of the dark alley where he lay breathlessly
listening, a faint rustling sound had suddenly risen--the sound of some
one creeping gently toward him. He knew and understood what was
happening, what an unkindly blow fate had dealt him. Ailsa was
returning. She had taken his expression, "Afterward you and I can meet
here again," to mean after she had conducted Dollops to the ruin, not
after Cleek's own work was done; and lo! here she was returning at this
inopportune moment. She was creeping along on tiptoe, it was true, and
moving as stealthily and as silently as she knew how, but in that utter
stillness, with silk skirts that brushed the wall as she advanced----

The end came abruptly. There was just one second of breathless
listening, then without a word the two people at the open doorway
parted. Lady Clavering jumped back, darted across the lane, and vanishe