He looked at her, curiously, and a little
familiarly, before he replied.

"Why, yes! He's pretty sure to be at home
at this time of day; but whether he'll see you
is quite another thing."

"Would you be so good as to ask him? It
is on very particular business."

"Can you give me a card? your name,
perhaps, will do, if you have not a card. I say,
Simmons" (to a lady's-maid crossing the hall),
"is the judge up yet?"

"Oh yes! he's in his dressing-room this
half-hour. My lady is coming down directly.
It is just breakfast-time."

"Can't you put it off, and come again, a little
later?" said he, turning once more to Ellinor—
white Ellinor! trembling Ellinor!

"No! please let me come in. I will wait.
I am sure Judge Corbet will see me, if you will
tell him I am here. Miss Wilkins. He will
know the name."

"Well, then; will you wait here till I have
got breakfast in," said the man, letting her into
the hall, and pointing to the bench there. He
took her, from her dress, to be a lady's-maid or
governess, or at most a tradesman's daughter;
and besides, he was behindhand with all his
preparations. She came in and sat down.

"You will tell him I am here," she said, faintly.

"Oh yes, never fear; I'll send up word, though
I don't believe he'll come to you before breakfast."

He told a page, who ran up-stairs, and, knocking
at the judge's door, told him a Miss Jenkins
wanted to speak to him.

"Who?" asked the judge from the inside.

"Miss Jenkins. She said you would know the
name, sir."

"Not I. Tell her to wait."

So Ellinor waited. Presently down the stairs,
with slow deliberate dignity, came the handsome
Lady Corbet, in her rustling silks and ample
petticoats, carrying her fine boy, and followed
by her majestic nurse. She was ill-pleased that
any one should come and take up her husband's
time when he was at home, and supposed to be
enjoying domestic leisure; and her imperious
inconsiderate nature did not prompt her to any
civility towards the gentle creature sitting down
weary and heart-sick in her house. On the
contrary, she looked her over as she slowly
descended, till Ellinor shrank abashed from the
steady gaze of the large black eyes. Then she,
her baby and nurse, disappeared into the large
dining-room, into which all the preparations for
breakfast had been carried.

The next person to come down would be the
judge. Ellinor instinctively put down her veil.
She heard his quick decided step; she had
known it well of old.

He gave one of his quick shrewd glances at
the person sitting in the hall and waiting to
speak to him, and his practised eye recognised
the lady at once, in spite of her travel-worn dress.

"Will you just come into this room," said
he, opening the door of his study, to the front
of the house, the dining-room was to the back;
they communicated by folding-doors.

The astute lawyer placed himself with his
back to the window; it was the natural position
of the master of the apartment; but it also
gave him the advantage of seeing his companion's
face in full light. Ellinor lifted her veil; it had
only been a dislike to a recognition in the hall,
which had made her put it down.

Judge Corbet's countenance changed more
than hers; she had been prepared for the
interview; he was not. But he usually had the
full command of the expression on his face.

"Ellinor! Miss Wilkins! is it you?" And he
went forwards holding out his hand with cordial
greeting, under which the embarrassment, if he
felt any, was carefully concealed. She could not
speak all at once in the way she wished.

"That stupid Henry told me Jenkins! I beg
your pardon. How could they put you down to
sit in the hall? You must come in and have
some breakfast with us; Lady Corbet will be
delighted, I'm sure." His sense of the
awkwardness of the meeting with the woman who
was once to have been his wife, and of the
probable introduction which was to follow to the
woman who was his actual wife, grew upon him,
and made him speak a little hurriedly. Ellinor's
next words were a wonderful relief; and her
soft gentle way of speaking was like the touch
of a cooling balsam.

"Thank you, you must excuse me. I am
come strictly on business, otherwise I should
never have thought of calling on you at such
an hour. It is about poor Dixon."

"Ah! I thought as much!" said the judge,
handing her a chair, and sitting down himself.
He tried to compose his mind to business, but,
in spite of his strength of character, and his
present efforts, the remembrance of old times
would come back at the sound of her voice. He
wondered if he was as much changed in appearance
as she struck him as being in that first
look of recognition; after that first glance he
rather avoided meeting her eyes.

"I knew how much you would feel it. Some
one at Hellingford told me you were abroad, in
Rome, I think. But you must not distress
yourself unnecessarily; the sentence is sure to
be commuted to transportation, or something
equivalent. I was talking to the Home Secretary
about it only last night. Lapse of time
and subsequent good character quite preclude
any idea of capital punishment." All the time
that he said this he had other thoughts at the
back of his mind—some curiosity, a little regret,
a touch of remorse, a wonder how the meeting
(which of course would have to be some time)
between Lady Corbet and Ellinor would go off;
but he spoke clearly enough on the subject
in hand, and no outward mark of distraction
from it appeared.

Ellinor answered:

"I came to tell you, what I suppose may be
told to any judge, in confidence and full reliance
on his secresy, that Abraham Dixon was not the
murderer." She stopped short, and choked a little.

The judge looked sharply at her.

"Then you know who was?" said he.