med, "I shall go up to my room. I
shall ring the dining room bell first. You will go up before me when you
hear that--and you will show me how you did it in the empty house?"

She made the affirmative sign once more.

At the same moment the door in the passage below was opened and closed
again. Geoffrey instantly went down stairs. It was possible that Anne
might have forgotten something; and it was necessary to prevent her from
returning to her own room.

They met in the passage.

"Tired of waiting in the garden?" he asked, abruptly.

She pointed to the dining-room.

"The postman has just given me a letter for you, through the grating in
the gate," she answered. "I have put it on the table in there."

He went in. The handwriting on the address of the letter was the
handwriting of Mrs. Glenarm. He put it unread into his pocket, and went
back to Anne.

"Step out!" he said. "We shall lose the train."

They started for their visit to Holchester House.

CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SEVENTH.

THE END.

AT a few minutes before six o'clock that evening, Lord Holchester's
carriage brought Geoffrey and Anne back to the cottage.

Geoffrey prevented the servant from ringing at the gate. He had taken
the key with him, when he left home earlier in the day. Having admitted
Anne, and having closed the gate again, he went on before her to the
kitchen window, and called to Hester Dethridge.

"Take some cold water into the drawing-room and fill the vase on the
chimney-piece," he said. "The sooner you put those flowers into water,"
he added, turning to his wife, "the longer they will last."

He pointed, as he spoke, to a nosegay in Anne's hand, which Julius had
gathered for her from the conservatory at Holchester House. Leaving her
to arrange the flowers in the vase, he went up stairs. After waiting for
a moment, he was joined by Hester Dethridge.

"Done?" he asked, in a whisper.

Hester made the affirmative sign. Geoffrey took off his boots and led
the way into the spare room. They noiselessly moved the bed back to its
place against the partition wall--and left the room again. When Anne
entered it, some minutes afterward, not the slightest change of any kind
was visible since she had last seen it in the middle of the day.

She removed her bonnet and mantle, and sat down to rest.

The whole course of events, since the previous night, had tended one
way, and had exerted the same delusive influence over her mind. It was
imposs