e lock of Zack's hair which she had taken from the old
newspaper, and had hidden in her bosom.

She was surprised at this; and she was more than surprised, when he
angrily and abruptly snatched up the lock of hair, just as she touched
it. Did he think that she wanted to take it away from him? If he did,
it was easy to show him that a lock of Zack's hair was just now no such
rarity that people need quarrel about the possession of it. She reached
her hand to the table behind, and, taking some of the hair from the old
newspaper, held it up to him with a smile, just as he was on the point
of putting his own lock of hair back in his pocket.

For a moment he did not seem to comprehend what her action meant; then
the resemblance between the hair in her hand and the hair in his own,
struck him suddenly.

The whole expression of his face changed in an instant--changed so
darkly that she recoiled from him in terror, and put back the hair into
the newspaper. He pounced on it directly; and, crunching it up in his
hand, turned his grim threatening face and fiercely-questioning eyes on
the landlady. While she was answering his inquiry, Madonna saw him look
towards Zack's bed; and, as he looked, another change passed over
his face--the darkness faded from it, and the red scars on his cheek
deepened in color. He moved back slowly to the further corner of the
room from the folding-doors; his restless eyes fixed in a vacant stare,
one of his hands clutched round the old newspaper, the other motioning
clumsily and impatiently to the astonished and alarmed women to leave
him.

Madonna had felt Patty's hand pulling at her arm more than once during
the last minute or two. She was now quite as anxious as her companion
to quit the house. They went out quickly, not venturing to look at Mat
again; and the landlady followed them. She and Patty had a long talk
together at the street door--evidently, judging by the expression
of their faces, about the conduct of the rough lodger up-stairs. But
Madonna felt no desire to be informed particularly of what they were
saying to each other. Much as Matthew's strange behavior had surprised
and startled her, he was not the uppermost subject in her mind just
then. It was the discovery of her secret, the failure of her little plan
for helping Zack with her own money, that she was now thinking of with
equal confusion and dismay. She had not been in the front room at Kirk
Street much more than five minutes a