ing into the passage, and shutting the
door, said, "Is your mistress up stairs? show me to her room, or--"

The old crone gave him one angry glance, which sank frightened beneath
the cruel gleam of his eyes, and hastening up the stairs with a quicker
stride than her age seemed to warrant, cried out, "Mistress, mistress!
here is Mr. Losely! Jasper Losely himself!" By the time the visitor had
reached the landing-place of the first floor, a female form had emerged
from a room above, a female face peered over the banisters. Losely
looked up and started as he saw it. A haggard face,--the face of one
over whose life there has passed a blight. When last seen by him it had
possessed beauty, though of a masculine rather than womanly character.
Now of that beauty not a trace! the cheeks shrunk and hollow left the
nose sharp, long, beaked as a bird of prey. The hair, once glossy in
its ebon hue, now grizzled, harsh, neglected, hung in tortured, tangled
meshes,--a study for an artist who would paint a fury. But the eyes were
bright,--brighter than ever; bright now with a glare that lighted up the
whole face bending over the man. In those burning eyes was there love?
was there hate? was there welcome? was there menace? Impossible to
distinguish; but at least one might perceive that there was joy.

"So," said the voice from above, "so we do meet at last, Jasper Losely!
you are come!"

Drawing a loose kind of dressing-robe more closely round her, the
mistress of the house now descended the stairs, rapidly, flittingly,
with a step noiseless as a spectre's, and, grasping Losely firmly by the
hand, led him into a chill, dank, sunless drawing-room, gazing into his
face fixedly all the while.

He winced and writhed. "There, there, let us sit down, my dear Mrs.
Crane."

"And once I was called Bella."

"Ages ago! Basta! All things have their end. Do take those eyes of
yours off my face; they were always so bright! and--really--now they are
perfect burning-glasses! How close it is! Peuh! I am dead tired. May I
ask for a glass of water; a drop of wine in it--or--brandy will do as
well."

"Ho! you have come to brandy and morning drams, eh, Jasper?" said Mrs.
Crane, with a strange, dreary accent. "I, too, once tried if fire could
burn up thought, but it did not succeed with me; that is years ago;
and--there--see the bottles are full still!"

While thus speaking, she had unlocked a chiffonniere of the shape
usually found in "genteel lod