ht was that he had unwittingly entered one
of those neglected shuttered houses of romance, where an eccentric female
recluse sits with a waiting wedding breakfast in readiness for a
bridegroom who has disappeared thirty years before. But the face of the
woman advancing towards him suggested that she was not particular about
the identity of the form emerging from the mists of time to rescue her
from virginity. She looked as if she would have gladly surrendered that
jewel to any freebooter in return for a passage in the ship of matrimony,
and gone off flying the proud signal, "All's well."

She approached with a smile, and heaven knows what agitation in her breast
at the sight of a handsome well-dressed young man in her lonely nest. "You
wished to see me?" she asked.

"Mrs. Pursill?" he said interrogatively.

She made a negative sign. "I am Miss Pursill. My mother is an invalid."

"I am most anxious to see her."

"My mother keeps to her bedroom."

"I have come down from London purposely to see her," he said anxiously.
"My business is very important."

"Could you not tell me?" she murmured.

"I am afraid not."

She fidgeted and came a little closer, as though she liked the nearness of
his handsome presence.

"Very well, you shall see her, but you won't be able to talk to her. Come
with me."

They went from the room and upstairs. Miss Pursill opened a door on the
first floor and beckoned Charles to enter. It was a bedroom, furnished on
the same scale of antique magnificence as the drawing-room downstairs. In
a deep armchair in front of a fire sat an old woman, tucked up in an
eiderdown of blue and white satin. She did not look round as they entered,
but remained quite still--an immobile figure with a nodding head.

"That is Mrs. Pursill," said her daughter.

Charles glanced at the old woman in the chair and turned away. She was
past anything except waiting for death, and it was impossible to speak to
her or question her. She was in the last stage of senile decay. He masked
his disappointment with an effort, conscious that the eyes of the younger
woman were fixed on his face.

"If there is anything I can tell you--" she simpered, as she met his
glance.

His face betrayed his anxiety.

"I had some reason to think that a young lady of my acquaintance, the
daughter of an old friend of your mother's, might be staying with her."

"There is no young lady here," said Miss Pursill with a hard look. "I know
noth