distinguished it, when she saw him, for the
first time, at Porthgenna Tower. He tried
to add to his first words of greeting an
apology for being late; but Rosamond
interrupted him, in her eagerness to ask the first
important question.

"We know that you have discovered her
address," she said, anxiously, "but we know
nothing more. Is she as you feared to find
her? Is she ill?"

The old man shook his head sadly. "When
I showed you her letter," he said, "what did
I tell you? She is so ill, madam, that not
even the message your kindness gave to me
will do her any good."

Those few simple words struck Rosamond's
heart with a strange fear, which silenced
her against her own will, when she tried to
speak again. Uncle Joseph understood the
anxious look she fixed on him, and the quick
sign she made towards the chair standing
nearest to the sofa on which she and her
husband were sitting. There he took his
place, and there he confided to them all that
he had to tell.

His first question, he said, when he reached
the shop of his countryman, the German
baker, related to the locality of the post-
office to which his niece's letters were
addressed; and the answer informed him
that it was situated within ten minutes' walk
of his friend's house. The conversation that
ensued on the subject of his errand in London,
and of his hopes and fears in undertaking it, led
to more questions and answers, which terminated
in the discovery that the baker, among
his other customers, supplied the landlady of
a lodging house in the neighbourhood with
certain light biscuits for which his shop was
famous. The biscuits were purchased for the
use of an invalid lady who was staying in the
house; and the landlady, on one of the many
occasions when she came to the shop and
gossiped about her own affairs, expressed
her surprise that a person so evidently
respectable and so punctual in all her
payments as the sick lodger, should be lying ill
without a friend to come and see her, and
should be living under the name of " Mrs.
James," when the name marked on her linen
was "S. Jazeph." Upon arriving at this
extraordinary result of a conversation which
had started from the simplest possible beginning,
the old man had taken down the
address of the lodging-house immediately,
and had gone there at an early hour the
next morning.

He had been saddened, over-night, by the
confirmation of his fears on his niece's account,
and he was startled, when he saw her in the
morning, by the violent nervous agitation
which she manifested as he approached her
bedside. But he had not lost heart and hope,
until he had communicated Mrs. Frankland's
message, and had found that it failed
altogether in producing the re-assuring effect on
her spirits which he had trusted and believed
that it would exercise. Instead of soothing,
it seemed to excite and alarm her afresh.
Among a host of minute inquiries about
Mrs. Frankland's looks, about her manner
towards him, about the exact words she had
spoken, all of which he was able to answer
more or less to her satisfaction, she had
addressed two questions to him, to which he
was utterly unable to reply. The first of the
questions was, Whether Mrs. Frankland had
said anything about the Secret? The second
was, Whether she had spoken any chance
word to lead to the suspicion that she had
found out the situation of the Myrtle
Room?

The doctor in attendance had come in, the
old man added, while he was still sitting by
his niece's bedside, and still trying ineffectually
to induce her to accept the friendly
and re-assuring language of Mrs. Frankland's
message, as sufficient answer to the questions
which he was unable to meet by any more
direct and more convincing form of reply.
After making some inquiries and talking a
little while on indifferent matters, the doctor
had privately taken him aside; had informed
him that the pain over the region of the
heart and the difficulty in breathing, which
were the symptoms of which his niece
complained, were more serious in their nature
than persons uninstructed in medical matters
might be disposed to think; and had begged
him to give her no more messages from any
one, unless he felt perfectly sure beforehand
that they would have the effect of clearing
her mind, at once and for ever, from the
secret anxieties that now harassed it—
anxieties which he might rest assured were
aggravating her malady day by day, and
rendering all the medical help that could be
given of little or no avail.

Upon this, after sitting longer with his
niece and after holding counsel with himself,
he had resolved to write privately to Mrs.
Frankland that evening, after getting back to
his friend's house. The letter had taken
him longer to compose than anyone
accustomed to writing would believe. At last,
after delays in making a fair copy from many
rough drafts, and delays in leaving his task
to attend on his niece, he had completed a
letter narrating what had happened since
his arrival in London, in language which he
hoped might be understood. Judging by
comparison of dates, this letter must have
crossed Mr. and Mrs. Frankland on the road.
It contained nothing more than he had just
been relating with his own lips—except that
it also communicated, as a proof that distance
had not diminished the fear which tormented
his niece's mind, the explanation she had
given to him of her concealment of her name,
and of her choice of an abode among
strangers, when she had friends in London
to whom she might have gone. That
explanation it was perhaps needless to have
lengthened the letter by repeating, for it only