remained as dim as ever, and that flash of strange light refused to come
again, though I watched for it with palpitating eagerness.

My father accompanied me every day in a drive, and a gradually
lengthening walk as my powers of walking increased; and one evening he
had agreed to come and fetch me at twelve the next day, that we might go
together to select a musical box, and other purchases rigorously demanded
of a rich Englishman visiting Geneva. He was one of the most punctual of
men and bankers, and I was always nervously anxious to be quite ready for
him at the appointed time. But, to my surprise, at a quarter past twelve
he had not appeared. I felt all the impatience of a convalescent who has
nothing particular to do, and who has just taken a tonic in the prospect
of immediate exercise that would carry off the stimulus.

Unable to sit still and reserve my strength, I walked up and down the
room, looking out on the current of the Rhone, just where it leaves the
dark-blue lake; but thinking all the while of the possible causes that
could detain my father.

Suddenly I was conscious that my father was in the room, but not alone:
there were two persons with him. Strange! I had heard no footstep, I
had not seen the door open; but I saw my father, and at his right hand
our neighbour Mrs. Filmore, whom I remembered very well, though I had not
seen her for five years. She was a commonplace middle-aged woman, in
silk and cashmere; but the lady on the left of my father was not more
than twenty, a tall, slim, willowy figure, with luxuriant blond hair,
arranged in cunning braids and folds that looked almost too massive for
the slight figure and the small-featured, thin-lipped face they crowned.
But the face had not a girlish expression: the features were sharp, the
pale grey eyes at once acute, restless, and sarcastic. They were fixed