time they had come together since the terrible night at
Thurwell Court, when their eyes had met for an awful moment over the
dead body of Rachel Kynaston. The memory of that scene flashed into the
minds of both of them; from hers, indeed, it had seldom been absent. She
stood face to face with the man whom she had been charged, by the
passionate prayers of a dying woman, to hunt down and denounce as a
murderer. They looked at one another with the same thoughts in the minds
of both. The first step she had already taken. Henceforth he would be
watched and dogged, his past life raked up, and his every action
recorded. And she it was who had set the underhand machinery at work,
she it was whom he, guilty or innocent, would think of as the woman who
had hunted him down. If he should be innocent, and the time should come
when he discovered all, what would he think of her? If he could have
seen her a few days back in the office of Messrs. Levy & Son, would he
look at her as he was doing now? The thought sent a shiver through her.
At that moment she hated herself.

It was no ordinary meeting this, for him or for her. Had she been able
to look him steadily in the face, she might have seen something of her
own nervousness reflected there. But that was just what at first she was
unable to do. One rapid glance into his pale features, which suffering
and intellectual labor seemed in some measure to have etherealized, was
sufficient. She had all the poignant sense of a culprit before an
injured but merciful judge, and at that moment the memory of those dying
words was faint within her. And so, though it is not usually the case,
it was he who appeared the least disturbed, and he it was who broke that
strange silence which had lasted several moments after she had come to a
standstill before him.

"You do not mind speaking to me, Miss Thurwell?"

"No; I do not mind," she answered in a low, hesitating tone.

"Then may I take it that Miss Kynaston's words have not--damaged me in
your esteem?" he went on, his voice quivering a little with suppressed
anxiety. "You do not--believe--that----"

"I neither believe nor disbelieve!" she interrupted. "Remember that you
had an opportunity of denying it which you did not accept!"

"That is true!" he answered slowly. "Let it remain like that, then. It
is best."

She had turned a little away as though to watch a screaming curlew fly
low down and vanish in the fog. From where he stood on slightly