"Could I speak to you for a moment, miss?" said the girl, in
rather a flurried, unsettled manner.

Miss Halcombe descended the steps into the shrubbery, and walked
aside a few paces with the maid.

Left by myself, my mind reverted, with a sense of forlorn
wretchedness which it is not in any words that I can find to
describe, to my approaching return to the solitude and the despair
of my lonely London home. Thoughts of my kind old mother, and of
my sister, who had rejoiced with her so innocently over my
prospects in Cumberland--thoughts whose long banishment from my
heart it was now my shame and my reproach to realise for the first
time--came back to me with the loving mournfulness of old,
neglected friends. My mother and my sister, what would they feel
when I returned to them from my broken engagement, with the
confession of my miserable secret--they who had parted from me so
hopefully on that last happy night in the Hampstead cottage!

Anne Catherick again! Even the memory of the farewell evening with
my mother and my sister could not return to me now unconnected
with that other memory of the moonlight walk back to London. What
did it mean? Were that woman and I to meet once more? It was
possible, at the least. Did she know that I lived in London? Yes;
I had told her so, either before or after that strange question of
hers, when she had asked me so distrustfully if I knew many men of
the rank of Baronet. Either before or after--my mind was not calm
enough, then, to remember which.

A few minutes elapsed before Miss Halcombe dismissed the maid and