n to the Newgate Calendar. The problem
was solved.

As he rose to his feet his heavy face brightened slowly with a terrible
smile. While the woman's Confession was in his pocket the woman herself
was in his power. "If she wants it back," he said, "she must get it
on my terms." With that resolution, he opened the door, and met Hester
Dethridge, face to face, in the passage.

CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FIFTH.

THE SIGNS OF THE END.

THE servant, appearing the next morning in Anne's room with the
breakfast tray, closed the door with an air of mystery, and announced
that strange things were going on in the house.

"Did you hear nothing last night, ma'am," she asked, "down stairs in the
passage?"

"I thought I heard some voices whispering outside my room," Anne
replied. "Has any thing happened?"

Extricated from the confusion in which she involved it, the girl's
narrative amounted in substance to this. She had been startled by the
sudden appearance of her mistress in the passage, staring about her
wildly, like a woman who had gone out of her senses. Almost at the same
moment "the master" had flung open the drawing-room door. He had caught
Mrs. Dethridge by the arm, had dragged her into the room, and had closed
the door again. After the two had remained shut up together for more
than half an hour, Mrs. Dethridge had come out, as pale as ashes, and
had gone up stairs trembling like a person in great terror. Some time
later, when the servant was in bed, but not asleep, she had seen a light
under her door, in the narrow wooden passage which separated Anne's
bedroom from Hester's bedroom, and by which she obtained access to her
own little sleeping-chamber beyond. She had got out of bed; had looked
through the keyhole; and had seen "the master" and Mrs. Dethridge
standing together examining the walls of the passage. "The master" had
laid his hand upon the wall, on the side of his wife's room, and had
looked at Mrs. Dethridge. And Mrs. Dethridge had looked back at him, and
had shaken her head. Upon that he had said in a whisper (still with his
hand on the wooden wall), "Not to be done here?" And Mrs. Dethridge had
shaken her head. He had considered a moment, and had whispered again,
"The other room will do! won't it?" And Mrs. Dethridge had nodded her
head--and so they had parted. That was the story of the night. Early in
the morning, more strange things had happened. The master had gone out,
with a large sealed packet in his han