, since the night when I had
discovered the ominous likeness between them? Had the events of the
morning so unnerved me already that I was at the mercy of any delusion
which common chances and common coincidences might suggest to my
imagination? Impossible to say. I could only feel that what had passed
between Miss Halcombe and myself, on our way from the summer-house, had
affected me very strangely. The foreboding of some undiscoverable
danger lying hid from us all in the darkness of the future was strong
on me. The doubt whether I was not linked already to a chain of events
which even my approaching departure from Cumberland would be powerless
to snap asunder--the doubt whether we any of us saw the end as the end
would really be--gathered more and more darkly over my mind. Poignant
as it was, the sense of suffering caused by the miserable end of my
brief, presumptuous love seemed to be blunted and deadened by the still
stronger sense of something obscurely impending, something invisibly
threatening, that Time was holding over our heads.

I had been engaged with the drawings little more than half an hour,
when there was a knock at the door. It opened, on my answering; and,
to my surprise, Miss Halcombe entered the room.

Her manner was angry and agitated. She caught up a chair for herself
before I could give her one, and sat down in it, close at my side.

"Mr. Hartright," she said, "I had hoped that all painful subjects of
conversation were exhausted between us, for to-day at least. But it is
not to be so. There is some underhand villainy at work to frighten my
sister about her approaching marriage. You saw me send the gardener on
to the house, with a letter addressed, in a strange handwriting, to
Miss Fairlie?"

"Certainly."

"The letter is an anonymous letter--a vile attempt to injure Sir
Percival Glyde in my sister's estimation. It has so agitated and
alarmed her that I have had the greatest possible difficulty in
composing her spirits sufficiently to allow me to leave her room and
come here. I know this is a family matter on which I ought not to
consult you, and in which you can feel no concern or interest----"

"I beg your pardon, Miss Halcombe. I feel the strongest possible
concern and interest in anything that affects Miss Fairlie's happiness
or yours."

"I am glad to hear you say so. You are the only person in the house,
or out of it, who can advise me. Mr. Fairlie, in his state of health
a