, and
the disappointed look with which he had recognised her.

"Scarcely; but I expected to receive news of some one else."

"Some one you are very anxious to hear about, I should imagine, from your
manner just now," said Adela, who could not forbear pressing the question
a little.

"Yes, Mrs. Branston, some one about whom I am anxious; a relation, in
short."

She looked at him with a puzzled air. She had never heard him talk of his
relations, had indeed supposed that he stood almost alone in the world;
but there was no reason that it should be so, except his silence on the
subject. She watched him for some moments in silence, as he stood leaning
against the opposite angle of the chimney-piece waiting for her to speak.
He was looking very ill, much changed since she had seen him last,
haggard and worn, with the air of a man who had not slept properly for
many nights. There was an absent far-away look in his eyes: and Adela
Branston felt all at once that her presence was nothing to him; that this
desperate step which she had taken had no more effect upon him than the
commonest event of every-day life; in a word, that he did not love her. A
cold deathlike feeling came over her as she thought this. She had set her
heart upon this man's love, and had indeed some justification for
supposing that it was hers. It seemed to her that life was useless--worse
than useless, odious and unendurable--without it.

But even while she was thinking this, with a cold blank misery in her
heart, she had to invent some excuse for this unseemly visit.

"I have waited so anxiously for you to call," she said at last, in a
nervous hesitating way, "and I began to fear that you must be ill, and I
wished to consult you about the management of my affairs. My lawyers
worry me so with questions which I don't know how to answer, and I have
so few friends in the world whom I can trust except you; so at last I
screwed up my courage to call upon you."

"I am deeply honoured by your confidence, Mrs. Branston," John Saltram
answered, looking at her gravely with those weary haggard eyes, with the
air of a man who brings his thoughts back to common life from some
far-away region with an effort. "If my advice or assistance can be of any
use to you, they are completely at your service. What is this business
about which your solicitor bothers you?"

"I'll explain that to you directly," Adela answered, taking some letters
from her pocket-book. "How good y