e appeared
just as when this great shock struck the household into confusion; the
dessert was not removed--the wine in which he had drunk Nathanael's
health, remained yet in Mr. Harper's glass. Agatha shrank back. She half
expected to see some shadowy form--not himself but Death, rise and sit
in the arm-chair whence the old man had fallen.

Brave she was, but she was still a girl, and a girl of strong
imagination. Her heart beat audibly; she put the lamp down in the middle
of the room, where it might cast more light, and render less ghastly the
last flicker of one wax-candle, the fellows of which had been left to
burn out in their sockets. Then she sat down, covered her eyes, and
tried to think connectedly of all that had happened this night.

Something touched her. She leaped up--would have screamed, but that
she remembered the room overhead--the room. She crouched down--again
covering her eyes.

Another touch, and a stirring in the window-curtain near which she
sat. There was something--every one knows that horrible
sensation--_something_ else in the room besides herself.

"Who is it?" she said, still not looking up, frightened at her own
voice.

"It's me, ma'am--only me."

Everybody in the house had forgotten Mr. Grimes.

Half-intoxicated at the time of Mr. Harper's seizure, he had stayed
behind in the dining-room, drunk himself stupid, and slept himself
sober--or partly so. They say drink is a great unfolder of truth; if
so, the old lawyer's sharp face betrayed that, in spite of all his past
civility, he had not the kindest feeling in the world towards the Harper
family.

"So, young lady, I frightened you? You did not expect to find me here."

"I did not, indeed; I had quite forgotten your very existence," said
Mrs. Harper, point-blank. She had conceived a great dislike to Mr.
Grimes, and Agatha was a girl who never took much trouble to disguise
her aversions.

"Thank you, ma'am. You are polite, like the rest of the Harpers. But
words, fair or foul, won't pay anything. Where's the Squire? He and I
have not yet settled the little business I came about."

"Mr. Grimes, perhaps you are not aware that my father-in-law is
dangerously ill--can enter upon no business, and see no person."

"In-deed?" His thorough insolence of manner brought Agatha's dignity
back. She remembered that she was a lady belonging to the house, and
that this fellow, whose behaviour made his grey hairs so little worthy
of respect, wa