in, and pushed
the door to--but so gently that she still left it ajar. "It will amuse
me to put his room to rights," she thought to herself. "I should like to
do something for him before I am down on my bed, helpless." She began
to arrange his drawers, and found his banker's book lying open in one
of them. "My poor dear, how careless he is! The servants might have seen
all his affairs, if I had not happened to have looked in." She set
the drawers right; and then turned to the multifarious litter on
a side-table. A little old-fashioned music-book appeared among the
scattered papers, with her name written in it, in faded ink. She blushed
like a young girl in the first happiness of the discovery. "How good
he is to me! He remembers my poor old music-book, and keeps it for my
sake." As she sat down by the table and opened the book, the bygone time
came back to her in all its tenderness. The clock struck the half-hour,
struck the three-quarters--and still she sat there, with the music-book
on her lap, dreaming happily over the old songs; thinking gratefully
of the golden days when his hand had turned the pages for her, when his
voice had whispered the words which no woman's memory ever forgets.

Norah roused herself from the volume she was reading, and glanced at the
clock on the library mantel-piece.

"If papa comes back by the railway," she said, "he will be here in ten
minutes."

Miss Garth started, and looked up drowsily from the book which was just
dropping out of her hand.

"I don't think he will come by train," she replied. "He will jog
back--as Magdalen flippantly expressed it--in the miller's gig."

As she said the words, there was a knock at the library door. The
footman appeared, and addressed himself to Miss Garth.

"A person wishes to see you, ma'am."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know, ma'am. A stranger to me--a respectable-looking man--and
he said he particularly wished to see you."

Miss Garth went out into the hall. The footman closed the library door
after her, and withdrew down the kitchen stairs.

The man stood just inside the door, on the mat. His eyes wandered, his
face was pale--he looked ill; he looked frightened. He trifled nervously
with his cap, and shifted it backward and forward, from one hand to the
other.

"You wanted to see me?" said Miss Garth.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am.--You are not Mrs. Vanstone, are you?"

"Certainly not. I am Miss Garth. Why do you ask the question?"

"I a