It was September before Philip Tremain turned his face homeward again, leaving behind him the deep, silent forests, already donning their wonderful autumn tints, and the silent waveless lake on whose bosom his boat had so often lain motionless for hours, drifting slowly with the almost imperceptible movement of the tide; while he, stretched full length along its narrow planking, his arms folded beneath his head, watched with speculative eyes the clear blue of the heavens, the passing of the fleecy clouds, the sweeping up of the rain mists, the birth of the stars, the rising loveliness of the crescent moon.

He had sought these solitudes to find some specific against the unrest and discontent of his heart. He had flown from the haunts of men, craving the healing power of nature, trusting to find forgetfulness in her potent charm. He had come to the very fountain head of nature, hoping to forget Patricia, and behold, nowhere was she more present to him. Nowhere did the spell of her beauty, her contradictions, work such havoc to his peace of mind.

The very motion of the boat, the blue waters of the lake, the "breath of the pine woods," the low rapid flight of a bird across the sky, all reminded him of her, and brought her so vividly before him as to cause him defined physical pain.

It was not, however, as the Miss Hildreth of the present, that she appeared to him—the successful beauty, the indifferent woman of the world, the jesting advocate of to-day's hateful creeds—but rather as the Patty of ten years ago; the Patty of his first passion, the love of his adolescence, the clear-eyed, honest-hearted, bewitching, wilful Patty of his first devotion.

He had sought for forgetfulness, but he had not found it; and so, after a month spent in unsatisfying and unsatisfactory inter-communion, he repacked his portmanteau one glorious autumn morning, bid good-bye to his little skiff, and to the silent sympathy of the pine woods, cast a long regretful look over the deep blue lake, and turning his steps towards the inartistic railway station, five miles distant, by afternoon of the same day was crossing the tortuous streets of Boston, preparatory to ensconcing himself comfortably in a "Pullman Express" for New York.

He reached that city in due time, and was at once immersed in the rush and go of its restless life. The streets were all alight, the open windows of hotels and restaurants displaying brightly dressed groups within, to whom the chief aim of existence for the hour was apparently, the excellence of a favourite ice, or the proper quality of the champagne frappÉ. Along the side-walks a varied crowd was constantly passing; shop-girls mostly, in large hats and pretty frocks, whose tired faces were flushed and eager, or pale and weary, according as they walked alone, or kept company with some smart young male assistant. Philip noticed with a half wonder, that each of these work-girls wore long gloves half-way up their arms, and that their low shoes were "dressy" to a degree, with patent tips and abnormally high heels, on which they limped along with heroic courage. The theatres were not out as yet; but Delmonico's and the Brunswick, were in the full swing of early evening traffic, and many were the envious glances cast by the weary pedestrians upon the more favoured few of fortune within those hospitable walls.

As Mr. Tremain let himself into his rooms with a pass key, he could not but feel how dreary and un-homelike was such a return. He had not telegraphed word of his arrival, and so found himself the sole occupant of the dark building; his servant and the care-taker were evidently enjoying life abroad this fine evening, and apparently the other habituÉs of the place were similarly employed.

He threw open the door of his sitting-room and entered; the room was in semi-darkness, the only light being a reflected one from the street lamps, and the moon which shone through the unsheltered windows. The furniture looked ghostly in the chintz over-coverings, and the faint gleam of gilded picture-frames and mirrors only added a further touch of unreality. On the writing-table he could just distinguish a pile of letters and newspapers—the accumulation of four weeks' absence; they seemed to him as the hand of civilisation, stretched out across the month of isolation and solitude, which separated him from the world of yesterday and to-day.

Striking a match he lit two of the wax candles in a small girandole; but they served only to make the darkness more apparent, and he was turning impatiently towards his bedroom, still holding the lighted taper, when the sound of quick hurrying feet, coming rapidly up the stone staircase, arrested his attention.

Why these particular sounds should at once arouse surprise and apprehension in his mind, he could not tell; many footsteps passed up and down the staircase in the course of the twenty-four hours, and as a rule he neither heard nor heeded them. But something in these quick agitated steps, with the tap of a light heel on each stair, disturbed him strangely.

The wax vesta burned down to his fingers and went out; and as the red spark vanished the footsteps halted, and Philip could distinctly hear the hurried respiration and quick-caught breath of some one just without his door. No sensation of fear or supernatural alarm overcame him, he stood quite still and waited; and as he thus stood counting these brief moments of suspense, he felt himself to be saying inwardly, that he was not at all surprised, it was only what he had expected—this night visitant—it was what he had come home for, the reason why he dared not linger longer beside the blue lake, in the depths of the keen-scented hemlock forest.

The hurried breathing grew more distinct; an uncertain hand was laid upon the handle of the scarcely closed outer door; there was the click of the catch being pushed hastily back; the rustle of a garment, the quick steps along the short passage, and then a figure detached itself from the enshrouding shadows and stood irresolute upon the threshold of the room.

A figure closely muffled in a long dark cloak, and a shadowy hat, beneath whose wide brim a white face flashed, and two eager eyes looked out, peering into the half lighted obscurity beyond.

It was but half a second the figure stood there, irresolute; then with a swift impulsive gesture it moved forward towards Philip, and as the light from the candles fell full upon the face, Mr. Tremain started, and then advanced quickly.

"Miss Dick!" he exclaimed. "You, and here!"

"Oh, yes," cried that young lady, still breathing very fast and speaking incoherently, her words rushing one on top of the other. "Oh, yes, it is I, and I am so glad to find you! I've been here twice already, each evening since we came back, and the door was always locked. To-night I saw the lights and thought at least I should hear something about you. Oh, Mr. Tremain, I am so glad you have come back at last!"

She stopped and looked at him appealingly, clasping and unclasping her fingers, with nervous impatience.

Philip was the least vain of men, but for one moment certainly a terrible thought did half form itself in his mind, as to the motive which had induced this most compromising visit. Was his little friend Miss Dick quite off her head, and was he in any way answerable for her aberration? The idea was not agreeable.

"My dear Miss Dick," he began, gravely, but she interrupted him.

"Oh, I thought you were never, never coming back again! That idiot of a care-taker and your fool of a servant, couldn't, or wouldn't, tell me anything about you. They only grinned discreetly behind their hands. Oh, what have you been doing to stay away like this, and never leave a scrap of an address behind you?"

"Good heavens!" thought Philip, "decidedly the poor girl is out of her mind, and if Tomkins, or Mrs. Barker have seen her like this, it will be all over town in a week, and her reputation nowhere."

"My dear Miss Dick," he said again, but Miss Darling evidently had no ears save for her own voice.

"It's perfectly dreadful—awful," she continued. "It has nearly broken my heart, and to think you should be away just when you were most needed, and I couldn't find you. And it is so hot, too, and such a season to be shut up in New York. Oh, why didn't you come before? What made you go away at all? I told Esther I would never rest until I found you, because I knew you could do something. You have always been a good friend to me, Mr. Tremain, you won't refuse me, will you?"

The tears were in her bright brown eyes as she spoke, and Philip, roused out of his self-consciousness by the sight of her earnestness, found himself saying, impetuously:

"What is it I can do for you, Miss Dick? You know I won't refuse, whatever you may ask."

"Oh, then go, go at once! Why do you stand looking at me so stupidly?" she cried, impatiently. "Every moment is precious, and here you are wasting them by the dozen!" She stamped her foot. "Why don't you go?" she repeated.

Philip, made more and more bewildered, could only look at her in vacant surprise, a fact that had the effect of reducing Miss Darling to silence, out of sheer rage.

"Go?" he said, slowly, repeating her words mechanically. "Go?—but where am I to go?"

"Ah," she gasped, beating her hands together, "how stupid you are, how cold, how cruel! Where are you to go? Why—but no, stay, it will be better if you come with me. Will you come—at once, directly? Here is your hat," and she caught up that article of apparel from off the table, and held it out to him. "Oh, do make haste," she cried, "do come with me at once."

But Mr. Tremain was not to be carried off in so unceremonious a manner. He took the hat out of her hand and laid it back on the table, before he said very quietly:

"My dear Miss Dick, I will go with you to any place you may name; but first, I do beg of you, compose yourself a little, and tell me what it is you want me to do; who it is you want me to see?"

Miss Darling pulled herself together with an evident effort.

"I want you to go with me to Ludlow Street Jail," she said, speaking very slowly, "to see Patricia Hildreth."

Had a cannon ball dropped at his feet, or the foundations of the house given way beneath him, Mr. Tremain could not have experienced a more sudden or appalling shock. The words reached him, but it seemed as if they came from miles away. He saw the dark, alert figure standing before him, whose bright, dark eyes never left his face, whose nervously working hands were so suggestive; but it lost all identity to him. It was not Dick Darling who stood there, entreating him to make haste, not to delay; it was some phantom, some Nemesis from out the past, whose words and entreaties were as unreal as the shadows that came creeping out of the corners, revealing bit by bit the cunningly-concealed spectres.

"Come with you to Ludlow Street!" he gasped at last, "to see Patricia Hildreth. What do you mean?"

"Oh, I mean what I say," cried Dick, her voice high and strained; "it is quite true. She is there. She has been arrested."

"Arrested!" gasped Philip. "Arrested—Patricia!"

"Oh! yes, yes," sobbed Miss Darling, the tears running down her face. "She has been arrested, she is in prison—she will die. She is innocent. I know she is innocent, I know it."

"Arrested!" cried Philip again, unable to grasp more than this one direct fact, and quite unmindful of Dick's tears and protestations. "Arrested! And for what?"

"Oh, that is the most terrible thing of all," wept Dick. "It's so horrible I don't know how to tell you; she is arrested on a suspicion of murder."

"My God!" cried Philip. "What horrible mockery is this?"

"Oh, will you come, will you come?" implored Dick, wringing her hands. "Oh, only think, she is shut up there all alone. She has been in that hateful place for hours, for days, while we have all been away dancing, and flirting, and being happy and amused; and she has been alone—all alone—shut up in prison with no one to go to her, no one to help her. Oh, I could beat myself for never knowing, never dreaming of her trouble!"

"It is horrible," said Philip again, in the same low, inward voice in which he had spoken since Dick's first outburst. "It is infamous. Who has done this thing? Who has brought this charge?"

He spoke sternly, and looked at Dick with eyes that burned her very soul.

"The Russian Count," she answered slowly. "Vladimir Mellikoff."

Mr. Tremain made no reply. He turned abruptly away from her and walked over to the window, and stood there looking out into the night.

The street was a quiet one at all times, and now even a solitary passing footstep echoed far ahead in the absolute silence. But had it been mid-day, with its roar and rumble of traffic, Philip would have heeded it as little as he now heeded the stillness and desertion.

His mind was far away, busy with a thousand wild conjectures, a thousand improbable suggestions. The whole of the past ten years appeared to roll themselves out before him, full to overflowing with dark suspicions, unassailable doubts, maddening possibilities. The poison distilled by Miss James's smooth tongue had done its work; how could he tell what those past years might cover, what deed or crime be hidden in their protecting folds?

Ten years lay between him and the Patricia of his youth; was his faith in her so unshaken as to admit of no room for doubt? Ah, there lay the sting! He did doubt, and in that lay the keenest torture of this terrible moment. Indeed, as he thought of her mocking raillery, of her pronounced indifference, her assumed cynicism and misanthropy, he felt there was room for doubt, there was room for suspicion, there was room for condemnation. Would to God, that he could proclaim aloud a like faith in her innocence, a like belief in her unsullied past, a like valour in her defence, as did Miss Darling! Would to God he had but the memory of her—pure and untainted—as she was ten years ago in which to trust, and by which to fight for her!

For indeed, he knew it would come to that; he should fight for her, yes, inch by inch, even though the game was a losing one. He would give her of his best, he would bring to bear all his possessions of legal acumen, brilliant pleading, forensic argument; she should not fail or be beaten down, if his strength and his reputation counted for anything.

He had loved her—yes—and he loved her now; he knew it; better perhaps in her hour of humiliation than in that of her triumph; and for that love's sake he would spend and be spent in her behalf. And yet, ah yet, there must be ever and always resting between him and her that

Meantime Miss Darling, standing where he had left her, watched him keenly. The eyes beneath the broad brim of her hat were soft and gentle, the tears still lay upon her cheeks. Instinctively she recognised the anguish of the man before her, and she respected it, looking on with reverent but unspoken sympathy. Presently she moved quietly across the room and approached him; he paid no attention to her; apparently he had forgotten her very existence. She put one hand timidly on his arm.

"Will you come?" she said. "Oh, will you come with me—to Patricia? Only think how long she has waited! Only think of Patricia—our Patricia—in prison on so vile a suspicion!"

He looked down upon her, and at the hand resting on his arm; his face was drawn and aged, his eyes dark with suffering.

"Yes, I will come," he said; "I will go with you. My God, only to think of it! Patricia—Patty—in prison, and for murder!"

He took up his hat mechanically, and followed her as she led the way down the dimly lighted stairs, their footsteps echoing drearily behind them. And so together they passed on and out of the dark building, and were swallowed up in the greater darkness of the night.

The wax candles in the wall-sconces burnt on all through the long night hours, and died out only as the early sunlight struck athwart their feeble rays. On the table lay the accumulated letters and papers, one marked across the face "immediate," in a strong, bold hand. On the floor a glove had dropped, and close beside the door lay a withered rose-bud, as it had fallen from Dick's breast-knot.

And the morning hours grew into noontide, and gave place to afternoon, followed in turn by the shadows of evening; but neither the master of the deserted room, nor the girl with the bright eyes beneath the wide hat, came back to it. And so another day was born, and died, and slipped away into eternity within the narrow confines of that solitary chamber.

END OF VOL. II.

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.