question to ask you. You
must come back."

"Lottie, I said I would have nothing to do with those books of yours,
and I won't. I hate novels, and I hate novelists. Forgive me, child. I
don't hate you; but if your father and John Hinton between them mean to
spoil a fine woman by encouraging her to become that monster of nature,
a blue-stocking, I won't help them, and that's flat. There now. Let me
go."

"It is no fiction I want to ask you, Uncle Jasper. It is a true tale,
one I have just heard. It concerns me and you and my father. It has
pained me very much, but I believe it can be cleared up. I would rather
ask you than my father about it, at least at first; but either of you
can answer what I want to know; so if you will not listen to me I can
speak to my father after dinner."

Uncle Jasper had one of those faces which reveal nothing, and it
revealed nothing now. But the keen eyes looked hard into the open gray
eyes of the girl who stood by his side.

"What thread out of that tangled skein has she got into her head?" he
whispered to himself. Aloud he said, "I will come back to dinner,
Charlotte, and afterwards you shall take me up to your little snuggery.
If you are in trouble, my dear, you had better confide in me than in
your father. He does not--does not look very strong."

Then he walked down the street; but when he reached his club he did not
enter it. He walked on and on. He puzzling, not so much over his niece's
strange words as over something else. Who was that woman who sat by
Charlotte's hearth that day?

CHAPTER IX.

CHARLOTTE CANNOT BEAR THE DARK.

The elder Mr. Harman had retired to his study, and Charlotte and her
uncle sat side by side in that young lady's own private apartment. The
room looked snug and sheltered, and the subdued light from a Queen's
reading-lamp, and from the glowing embers of a half burned-out fire,
were very pleasant. Uncle Jasper was leaning back in an armchair, but
Charlotte stood on the hearthrug. Soft and faint as the light was, it
revealed burning cheeks and shining eyes; but the old face these tokens
of excitement appealed to remained completely in shadow.

Charlotte had told the story she had heard that day, and during its
whole recital her uncle had sat motionless, making no comment either by
word or exclamation.

Mrs. Home's tale had been put into skilful hands. It was well told--all
the better because the speaker so earnestly hoped that its existence
mi