"This is wonderful!" cried she, at last.

"What is wonderful, aunt? Do pray gratify
our curiosity!"

But the old lady hurried away without a word,
and the door of her room, as it sharply banged,
showed that she desired to be alone.

CHAPTER XIX. A SHOCK.

No sooner did Miss Grainger find herself
safely locked in her room, than she re-opened the
letter the post had just brought her. It was
exceedingly brief, and seemed hastily written:

"Strictly and imperatively private.

"Trieste, Tuesday morning.

"My dear Miss Grainger,—I have just arrived
here from India, with important despatches for
the government. The fatigues of a long journey
have re-opened an old wound, and laid me up for
a day; but as my papers are of such a nature as
will require my presence to explain, there is no
use in my forwarding them by another; I wait
therefore, and write this hurried note, to say
that I will make you a flying visit on Saturday
next. I say you, because I wish to see yourself
and alone. Manage this in the best way
you can. I hope to arrive by the morning train,
and be at the villa by eleven or twelve at latest.
Whether you receive me or not, say nothing of
this note to your nieces; but I trust and pray
you will not refuse half an hour to your attached
and faithful friend,

"HARRY CALVERT."

It was a name to bring up many memories,
and Miss Grainger sat gazing at the lines before
her in a state of wonderment blended with
terror. Once only had she read of him since
his departure; it was, when agitated and
distressed to know what had become of him,
she ventured on a step of, for her, daring
boldness, and to whose temerity she would not make
her nieces the witnesses. She wrote a letter to
Miss Sophia Calvert, begging to have some
tidings of her cousin, and some clue to his
whereabouts. The answer came by return of
post; it ran thus:

"Miss Calvert has to acknowledge the receipt
of Miss Grainger's note of the 8th inst.

"Miss Calvert is not aware of any claim Miss
Grainger can prefer to address her by letter,
still less, of any right to bring under her notice
the name of the person she has dared to inquire
after. Any further correspondence from Miss
Grainger will be sent back unopened."

The reading of this epistle made the old lady
keep her bed for three days, her sufferings
being all the more aggravated, since they
imposed secresy. From that day forth she had
never heard Calvert' s name; and though for
hours long she would think and ponder over
him, the mention of him was so strictly
interdicted, that the very faintest allusion to him
was even avoided.

And now, like one risen from the grave, he
was come back again! Come back to renew,
Heaven could tell, what sorrows of the past, and
refresh the memory of days that had always
been dashed with troubles.

It was already Friday. Where and how could
a message reach him? She dreaded him, it is
true: but why she dreaded him she knew not. It
was a sort of vague terror, such as some persons
feel at the sound of the sea, or the deep-voiced
moaning of the wind through trees. It conveyed
a sense of peril through a sense of sadness no
more. She had grown to dislike him from the
impertinent rebuke Miss Calvert had administered
to her on his account. The mention of
Calvert was coupled with a darkened room,
leeches, and ice on the head, and, worse than
all, a torturing dread that her mind might
wander, and the whole secret history of the
correspondence leak out in her ramblings.

Were not these reasons enough to make her
tremble at the return of the man who had
occasioned so much misery? Yet, if she could
even find a pretext, could she be sure that she
could summon courage to say, "I'll not see you"?
There are men to whom a cruelly cold reply is a
repulse; but Calvert was not one of these, and
this she knew well. Besides, were she to decline
to receive him, might it not drive him to come
and ask to see the girls, who now, by acceding
to his request, need never hear or know of his
visit?

After long and mature deliberation, she
determined on her line of action. She would
pretend to the girls that her letter was from her
lawyer, who, accidentally finding himself in her
neighbourhood, begged an interview as he passed
through Orta on his way to Milan, and for this
purpose she could go over in the boat alone, and
meet Calvert on his arrival. In this way she
could see him without the risk of her nieces'
knowledge, and avoid the unpleasantness of not
asking him to remain when he had once passed
her threshold.

"I can at least show him," she thought,
"that our old relations are not to be revived,
though I do not altogether break off all
acquaintanceship. No man has a finer sense of
tact, and he will understand the distinction I
intend, and respect it." She also bethought her
it smacked somewhat of a vengeance—though
she knew not precisely how or why—that she'd
take Sophia Calvert's note along with her, and
show him how her inquiry for him was treated
by his family. She had a copy of her own, a
most polite and respectful epistle it was, and in
no way calculated to evoke the rebuke it met
with. "He'll be perhaps able to explain the
mystery," thought she, "and whatever Miss
Calvert's misconception, he can eradicate it
when he sees her."

"How fussy and important aunt is this
morning!" said Florence, as the old lady stepped
into the boat. "If the interview were to be
with the Lord Chancellor instead of a London
solicitor, she could not look more profoundly
impressed with its solemnity."

"She'll be dreadful when she comes back,"
said Emily, laughing; " so full of all the law
jargon that she couldn't understand, but will