possible. He would be
uneasy at her silence. Oh, bow could she ever write to him again? What
might happen to-morrow? At the thought, she held her breath and lay in
silence.

She rose in time for breakfast, but at the last moment could not bring
herself to go down to the meal. To face her father was impossible. Her
mother came to the door, and Emily answered her that she would lie for
an hour or two longer, being still unwell. During the half-hour that
followed she sat listening intently to every sound in the house. Hood,
having breakfasted, came upstairs and entered his room; when, a few
minutes later, he came out, his steps made a pause at her threshold. Her
heart beat in sickening fear; she could not have found voice to reply to
him had he spoken. But he did not do so, and went downstairs. She heard
him open the front door, and sprang to the window to catch a glimpse of
him. At the gate he turned and looked up to her window; his face was
sorrowful. Emily held back that he might not see her; when it was too
late she could not understand this movement, and longed to wave him a
good-bye. She threw up the sash; her father did not turn again.

We follow him. Not very long after his arrival at the mill, Dagworthy
himself appeared. Hood's evil conscience led him to regard with
apprehension every unusual event. Dagworthy's unwonted earliness was
still troubling his mind, when a messenger summoned him to the private
room. There was nothing extraordinary in this, but Hood, as he crossed
the passage, shook with fear; before knocking and pushing open the door,
he dashed drops from his forehead with his hand. Dagworthy was alone,
sitting at the desk.

'Shut the door,' he said, without turning his eyes from a letter he was
reading.

The clerk obeyed, and stood for a full minute before anything more was
addressed to him. He knew that the worst had come.

Dagworthy faced half round.

'One day early last week,' he began, averting his eyes after a single
glance, 'I was looking over one of these ledgers'--he pointed to the
shelf--'and left an envelope to mark a place. I forgot about it, and
now that I look, the envelope has gone. It contained a bank-note. Of
course you came across it in the course of your work.'

It was rather an assertion than a question. Whilst he was speaking, the
courage of despair had taken hold upon his hearer. Like the terrible
flash of memory which is said to strike the brain of a drowning man,
there sm