ess of
Mrs. Sherwin. She might be dying--dead for aught I knew--when he reached
the house. I ran to the window, to call him back: it was too late. Ralph
was gone.

Even if he were admitted at North Villa, would he succeed? I was little
capable of estimating the chances. The unexpectedness of his visit; the
strange mixture of sympathy and levity in his manner, of worldly wisdom
and boyish folly in his conversation, appeared to be still confusing
me in his absence, just as they had confused me in his presence. My
thoughts imperceptibly wandered away from Ralph, and the mission he had
undertaken on my behalf, to a subject which seemed destined, for the
future, to steal on my attention, irresistibly and darkly, in all my
lonely hours. Already, the fatality denounced against me in Mannion's
letter had begun to act: already, that terrible confession of past
misery and crime, that monstrous declaration of enmity which was to last
with the lasting of life, began to exercise its numbing influence on my
faculties, to cast its blighting shadow over my heart.

I opened the letter again, and re-read the threats against me at its
conclusion. One by one, the questions now arose in my mind: how can I
resist, or how escape the vengeance of this evil spirit? how shun the
dread deformity of that face, which is to appear before me in secret?
how silence that fiend's tongue, or make harmless the poison which it
will pour drop by drop into my life? When should I first look for that
avenging presence?--now, or not till months hence? Where should I first
see it? in the house?--or in the street? At what time would it steal
to my side? by night--or by day? Should I show the letter to Ralph?--it
would be useless. What would avail any advice or assistance which his
reckless courage could give, against an enemy who combined the ferocious
vigilance of a savage with the far-sighted iniquity of a civilised man?

As this last thought crossed my mind, I hastily closed the letter;
determining (alas! how vainly!) never to open it again. Almost at the
same instant, I heard another knock at the house-door. Could Ralph have
returned already? impossible! Besides, the knock was very different from
his--it was only just loud enough to be audible where I now sat.

Mannion? But would he come thus? openly, fairly, in the broad daylight,
through the populous street?

A light, quick step ascended the stairs--my heart bounded; I started to
my feet. It was the sa