hich had been prepared for her before she was born, and had dogged
her lonely footsteps since childhood. In the isolated circumstances of her
life and upbringings it was not strange, perhaps, that she had such
imaginings.

She had loved Charles Turold with all the strength of a passionate
solitary nature, and it was this feeling or instinct of fatality which had
given her the strength to renounce him. Indeed, it seemed to her that that
inseparable companion of her inmost thoughts had prompted her to linger
outside the door at Flint House on this afternoon so that she should
overhear her father's words--catch that sinister fragment of a sentence
which compelled her to refuse the love of Charles until she had learnt the
truth. She could not listen to him with that secret half-guessed. And, the
full truth known, no other course was open to her save renunciation.

She had not wavered. Sometimes, in the vain way of the young heart seeking
for happiness, she found herself wishing that she had not listened at the
door to those few words which sent her back to Flint House that awful
night to learn the truth from her father, or, at least, had not acted upon
them. The words she overheard had not told her much, and she might have
tried to forget them. But she thrust that thought from her like an evil
thing. She would have hated herself if she had followed that course and
found out the truth of her birth afterwards, deeming herself unworthy of
the love of one who had been ready to sacrifice everything for her sake.
No! It was better, far better, that she should know.

She had not thought of suspicion falling on herself. Her youth and
inexperience, borne upward on the lofty wings of sacrifice, had not
foreseen the damning significance which might gather round her secret
visit to Flint House and her subsequent disappearance. Not even when she
heard of her father's death had the folly of her contemplated action
dawned on her. Her dreamy unpractical temperament, keyed up to the great
act of abnegation, had not paused to consider what the consequences might
be to herself.

Lying there in the darkness of her room, she recalled how that revelation
had been made to her. It was the first night after her arrival in London,
in the drawing-room of a private hotel near Russell Square, where she had
intended staying for a few days while she sought for some kind of
employment. There was a group of women seated round the fireplace,
talking. She