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 away, but could not. 'Don't you know all—don't you know it? Yet how do you come here if you do not know?'

'I inquired here and there, and I found the way.'

'I waited and waited for you!' she went on, her tones suddenly resuming their old fluty pathos, 'But you did not come. And I wrote to you, and you did not come! He kept on saying you would never come any more, and that I was a foolish woman. He was very kind to me, and mother, and to all of us after father's death. He'

'I don't understand.'

'He has won me back to him.'

Clare looked at her keenly, then, gathering her meaning, flagged like one plague-stricken, and his glance sank; it fell on her hands, which, once rosy, were now white and delicate.

She continued—

'He is upstairs. I hate him now, because he told me a lie—that you would not come again; and you have come! But—will you go away, Angel, please, and never come any more?'

They stood fixed, their baffled hearts looking