took several
turns backward and forward in the room, without seeming to notice me as
I stood by the door. "You villain! you villain! you villain!" I heard
her whisper to herself many times over, in a quick, hissing, fierce
way. Then she stopped, and said on a sudden, "Can it be true?" Then she
looked up, and, seeing me standing at the door, started as if I had been
a stranger, changed color again, and told me, in a stifled voice, to
leave her and come back again in half an hour. I obeyed, feeling certain
that she must have received some very bad news of her husband, and
wondering, anxiously enough, what it might be.

When I returned to the breakfast-room her face was as much discomposed
as ever. Without speaking a word she handed me two sealed letters: one,
a note to be left for Mr. Meeke at the parsonage; the other, a letter
marked "Immediate," and addressed to her solicitor in London, who was
also, I should add, her nearest living relative.

I left one of these letters and posted the other. When I came back I
heard that my mistress had taken to her room. She remained there for
four days, keeping her new sorrow, whatever it was, strictly to herself.
On the fifth day the lawyer from London arrived at the Hall. My mistress
went down to him in the library, and was shut up there with him for
nearly two hours. At the end of that time the bell rang for me.

"Sit down, William," said my mistress, when I came into the room. "I
feel such entire confidence in your fidelity and attachment that I am
about, with the full concurrence of this gentleman, who is my nearest
relative and my legal adviser, to place a very serious secret in your
keeping, and to employ your services on a matter which is as important
to me as a matter of life and death."

Her poor eyes were very red, and her lips quivered as she spoke to me.
I was so startled by what she had said that I hardly knew which chair to
sit in. She pointed to one placed near herself at the table, and seemed
about to speak to me again, when the lawyer interfered.

"Let me entreat you," he said, "not to agitate yourself unnecessarily.
I will put this person in possession of the facts, and, if I omit
anything, you shall stop me and set me right."

My mistress leaned back in her chair and covered her face with her
handkerchief. The lawyer waited a moment, and then addressed himself to
me.

"You are already aware," he said, "of the circumstances under which
your master left thi