ademoiselle," she said (she always
called Theo mademoiselle in these days), "two English ladies, who did
not give their names. They asked for Miss North."

Theo looked at the woman, and turned pale. She did not know how or why
her mother and Pamela should come down to this place, but she felt sure
it was they who were awaiting her; and for the first time since she had
received the telegram, a shock of something like misgiving rushed upon
her. Suppose, after all, she had not done right. Suppose she had done
wrong, and they had heard of it, and came to reproach her, or worse
still (poor child, it seemed worse still to her), to take her away--to
make her leave her love to strangers. She began to tremble, and as she
went out of the room, she looked back on the face upon the pillow, with
a despairing fear that the look might be her last.

She hardly knew how she got down the narrow stair-case. She only knew
that she went slowly, in a curious sort of hysterical excitement.

Then she was standing upon the mat at the parlor-door; then she had
opened the door itself, and stood upon the threshold, looking in upon
two figures just revealed to her in the shadow. One figure--yes, it was
Pamela's; the other not her mother's. No, the figure of Priscilla Gower.

"Pamela!" she cried out. "Oh, Pam, don't blame me!"

She never knew how the sight of her standing before them, like a poor
little ghost, with her white, appealing eyes, touched one of these two
women to the heart.

There was something pathetic in her very figure--something indescribably
so in her half-humble, half-fearing voice.

Pamela rose up from the horse-hair sofa, and went to her.

Each of the three faces was pale enough; but Pamela had the trouble of
these two, as well as her own anxiousness in her eyes.

"Theo," she said to her, "what have you done? Don't you understand what
a mad act you have been guilty of?"

But her voice was not as sharp as usual, and it even softened before she
finished speaking. She made Theo sit down, and gave her a glass of water
to steady her nervousness. She could not be angry even at such
indiscretion as this--in the face of the tremulous hands and pleading
eyes.

"Where was Lady Throckmorton?" she said. "What was she doing, to let you
come alone?"

"She was away," put in Theo, faintly. "And the telegram said he was
dying, Pam, and--I didn't come alone quite. I brought Splaighton with
me."

"You had no right to come at all," s