Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/329

 "I beg your pardon," said Northcote, "I am afraid I don't know you."

"You do not know me?" said his visitor in a tone that entered his blood. "I will give you a moment to think."

Northcote seemed to recoil with a half-born pang of recollection which refused to take shape.

"I have not the faintest knowledge of having met you before," he said, feeling how vain was the effort to fix his thought.

"Think," said his visitor.

"It is in vain."

"I should not have expected you to have so short a memory," said the woman. "You saw me yesterday and you saw me the day before that."

"I do not recognize you at all," said Northcote faintly.

"Should I have remembered that you were a busy man who was unable to spare a thought outside of his profession?"

There was something curiously stealthy in the fall of the voice which startled the advocate.

"That is a voice I seem to recall," he said, with an air almost of distress.

"A voice you seem to recall," said his visitor, with a sombre laughter which made his heart beat violently. "How strange it is that you should recall it! You only heard it once, and that was in the stifling darkness of a prison!"

Northcote gave a cry of stupefaction.

"Impossible, impossible!" he said weakly. "You—you cannot be the woman Emma Harrison!"

"Emma Murray, alias Warden, alias Harrison,"