“The person who carries on the business here discovered the address for me,” she began.  “I had some difficulty, however, in finding the house.  It is little more than a cottage; and it is quite lost in a great garden, surrounded by high walls.  I saw a carriage waiting.  The coachman was walking his horses up and down—­and he showed me the door.  It was a high wooden door in the wall, with a grating in it.  I rang the bell.  A servant-girl opened the grating, and looked at me.  She refused to let me in.  Her mistress had ordered her to close the door on all strangers—­especially strangers who were women.  I contrived to pass some money to her through the grating, and asked to speak to her mistress.  After waiting some time, I saw another face behind the bars—­and it struck me that I recognized it.  I suppose I was nervous.  It startled me.  I said, ‘I think we know each other.’  There was no answer.  The door was suddenly opened—­and who do you think stood before me?”

“Was it somebody I know?”

“Yes.”

“Man? or woman?”

“It was Hester Dethridge.”

“Hester Dethridge!”

“Yes.  Dressed just as usual, and looking just as usual—­with her slate hanging at her side.”

“Astonishing!  Where did I last see her?  At the Windygates station, to be sure—­going to London, after she had left my sister-in-law’s service.  Has she accepted another place—­without letting me know first, as I told her?”

“She is living at Fulham.”

“In service?”

“No.  As mistress of her own house.”

“What!  Hester Dethridge in possession of a house of her own?  Well! well! why shouldn’t she have a rise in the world like other people?  Did she let you in?”

“She stood for some time looking at me, in that dull strange way that she has.  The servants at Windygates always said she was not in her right mind—­and you will say, Sir Patrick, when you hear what happened, that the servants were not mistaken.  She must be mad.  I said, ’Don’t you remember me?’ She lifted her slate, and wrote, ’I remember you, in a dead swoon at Windygates House.’  I was quite unaware that she had been present when I fainted in the library.  The discovery startled me—­or that dreadful, dead-cold look that she has in her eyes startled me—­I don’t know which.  I couldn’t speak to her just at first.  She wrote on her slate again—­the strangest question—­in these words:  ’I said, at the time, brought to it by a man.  Did I say true?’ If the question had been put in the usual way, by any body else, I should have considered it too insolent to be noticed.  Can you understand my answering it, Sir Patrick?  I can’t understand it myself, now—­and yet I did answer.  She forced me to it with her stony eyes.  I said ‘yes.’”

“Did all this take place at the door?”

“At the door.”

“When did she let you in?”