"If you please, Mr. Murray, I would rather go now. I have given you
your book, and that is all I came for."

"Which means that you are afraid of me, and want to get out of my
sight?"

She did not deny it, but her face flushed painfully.

"Edna Earl, you are at least honest and truthful, and those are rare
traits at the present day. I thank you for preserving and returning
my Dante. Did you read any of it?"

"Yes, sir, all of it. Good-night, sir."

"Wait a moment. When did Aaron Hunt die?"

"Two months after you saw him."

"You have no relatives? No cousins, uncles, aunts?"

"None that I ever heard of. I must go, sir."

"Good-night, child. For the present, when you go out in the grounds,
be sure that wolf, Ali, is chained up, or you may be sorry that I
did not cut his throat, as I am still inclined to do."

She closed the door, ran lightly across the rotunda, and regaining
her own room, felt inexpressibly relieved that the ordeal was over--
that in future there remained no necessity for her to address one
whose very tones made her shudder, and the touch of whose hand