r?"

"Certainly. For twenty years we lost sight of one another completely.
Why do you ask?"

"Did he ever live in London?" asked Zillah, despairingly.

"Yes," said the Earl; "he lived there for two years, and I scarcely
ever saw him. I was in politics; he was in the army. I was busy every
moment of my time; he had all that leisure which officers enjoy, and
leading the life of gayety peculiar to them. But why do you ask? What
connection has all this with the papers?"

Zillah murmured some inaudible words, and then sat watching the Earl
as he began to examine the papers, with a face on which there were
visible a thousand contending emotions. The Earl looked over the
papers. There was the cipher and the key; and there was also a paper
written out by Zillah, containing the explanation of the cipher,
according to the key. On the paper which contained the key was a
written statement to the effect that two-thirds of the letters had no
meaning. Trusting to this, Zillah had written out her translation of
the cipher, just as Hilda had before done.

The Earl read the translation through most carefully.

"What's this?" he exclaimed, in deeper agitation. Zillah made no
reply. In fact, at that moment her heart was throbbing so furiously
that she could not have spoken a word. Now had come the crisis of her
fate, and her heart, by a certain deep instinct, told her this.
Beneath all the agitation arising from the change in the Earl there
was something more profound, more dread. It was a continuation of
that dark foreboding which she had felt at Pomeroy Court--a certain
fearful looking for of some obscure and shadowy calamity.

The Earl, after reading the translation, took the cipher writing and
held up the key beside it, while his thin hands trembled, and his
eyes seemed to devour the sheet, as he slowly spelled out the
frightful meaning. It was bad for Zillah that these papers had fallen
into his hands in such a way. Her evil star had been in the ascendant
when she was drawn on to this. Coming to him thus, from the hand of
Zillah herself, there was an authenticity and an authority about the
papers which otherwise might have been wanting. It was to him, at
this time; precisely the same as if they had been handed to him by
the General himself. Had they been discovered by himself originally,
it is possible--in fact, highly probable--that he would have looked
upon them with different eyes, and their effect upon him would have
been