of it might kill her. And yet it was imperative that the truth
should be told her without delay.

The two young men went to her ladyship's sitting room. She was alone, a
volume of her favourite Schopenhauer open before her, under the light of
the shaded reading-lamp. Sorry comfort in the hour of trouble!

Maulevrier went over to her and kissed her; and then dropped silently
into a chair near at hand, his face in shadow. Hartfield seated himself
nearer the sofa, and nearer the lamp.

'Dear Lady Maulevrier, I have come to tell you some very bad news--'

'Lesbia?' exclaimed her ladyship, with a frightened look.

'No, there is nothing wrong with Lesbia. It is about your old servant
Steadman.'

'Dead?' faltered Lady Maulevrier, ashy pale, as she looked at him in the
lamplight.

He bent his head affirmatively.

'Yes. He was seized with apoplexy--fell from his chair to the hearth,
and never spoke or stirred again.'

Lady Maulevrier uttered no word of sorrow or surprise. She lay, looking
straight before her into vacancy, the pale attenuated features rigid as
if they had been marble. What was to be done--what must be told--whom
could she trust? Those were the questions repeating themselves in her
mind as she stared into space. And no answer came to them.

No answer came, except the opening of the door opposite her couch. The
handle turned slowly, hesitatingly, as if moved by feeble fingers; and
then the door was pushed slowly open, and an old man came with shuffling
footsteps towards the one lighted spot in the middle of the room.

It was the old man Lord Hartfield had last seen gloating over his
treasury of gold and jewels--the man whom Maulevrier had never
seen--whose existence for forty years had been hidden from every
creature in that house, except Lady Maulevrier and the Steadmans, until
Mary found her way into the old garden.

He came close up to the little table in front of Lady Maulevrier's
couch, and looked down at her, a strange, uncanny being, withered and
bent, with pale, faded eyes in which there was a glimmer of unholy
light.

'Good-evening to you, Lady Maulevrier,' he said in a mocking voice. 'I
shouldn't have known you if we had met anywhere else. I think, of the
two of us, you are more changed than I.'

She looked up at him, her features quivering, her haughty head drawn
back; as a bird shrinks from the gaze of a snake, recoiling, but too
fascinated to fly. Her eyes met his with a look of unutt