?"

If the conjecture was right, the one event in the past which had
appeared to be entirely disconnected with the events that had preceded
it was, on the contrary, the one missing link which made the chain
complete. Mr. Brock's comfortable common sense instinctively denied that
startling conclusion. He looked at Midwinter with a compassionate smile.

"My young friend," he said, kindly, "have you cleared your mind of all
superstition as completely as you think? Is what you have just said
worthy of the better resolution at which you arrived last night?"

Midwinter's head drooped on his breast; the color rushed back over his
face; he sighed bitterly.

"You are beginning to doubt my sincerity," he said. "I can't blame you."

"I believe in your sincerity as firmly as ever," answered Mr. Brock. "I
only doubt whether you have fortified the weak places in your nature as
strongly as you yourself suppose. Many a man has lost the battle against
himself far oftener than you have lost it yet, and has nevertheless won
his victory in the end. I don't blame you, I don't distrust you. I only
notice what has happened, to put you on your guard against yourself.
Come! come! Let your own better sense help you; and you will agree with
me that there is really no evidence to justify the suspicion that the
woman whom I met in Somersetshire, and the woman who attempted suicide
in London, are one and the same. Need an old man like me remind a young
man like you that there are thousands of women in England with beautiful
figures--thousands of women who are quietly dressed in black silk gowns
and red Paisley shawls?"

Midwinter caught eagerly at the suggestion; too eagerly, as it might
have occurred to a harder critic on humanity than Mr. Brock.

"You are quite right, sir," he said, "and I am quite wrong. Tens of
thousands of women answer the description, as you say. I have been
wasting time on my own idle fancies, when I ought to have been carefully
gathering up facts. If this woman ever attempts to find her way to
Allan, I must be prepared to stop her." He began searching restlessly
among the manuscript leaves scattered about the table, paused over one
of the pages, and examined it attentively. "This helps me to something
positive," he went on; "this helps me to a knowledge of her age. She was
twelve at the time of Mrs. Armadale's marriage; add a year, and bring
her to thirteen; add Allan's age (twenty-two), and we make her a woman
of fiv