’Yes, if she repeats it.  I shall have no choice.  Well, I wished to see you first; I will go to Banbrigg at once.’

Mrs. Baxendale seemed reluctant to let him go, yet at length she did.  He was absent an hour and a half.  At his return Mrs. Baxendale had friends with her in the drawing room.  Wilfrid ascertained it from the servant, and said that he would go to the sitting-room he had formerly occupied, and wait there till the lady was alone.

She came to him before very long, and learnt that he had not been able to see Emily; the servant had told him that she could see no one till the next morning.

Mrs. Baxendale sighed.

‘Then you must wait.’

‘Yes, I must wait.’

He passed the night at the house.  Mr. Baxendale was in London, parliamentarily occupied.  At eleven next morning he went again to Banbrigg.  Again he was but a short time absent, and in his face, as he entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Baxendale read catastrophe.

‘She has gone!’ he said.  ’She left very early this morning.  The girl has no idea where she has gone to, but says she won’t return—­that she has left for good.  What does this mean?’

‘What does it mean?’ the lady repeated musingly.  ‘I wonder, I wonder.’

‘She knew I called yesterday; I left my name.  She has gone to avoid me.’

‘That may be.  But all her preparations were evidently made.’

’But it may not be true.  The girl of course would say whatever she was bidden to.  I don’t believe that she has really gone.’

‘I do,’ said Mrs. Baxendale, with quiet significance.

’On what grounds?  You know more than you will tell me.  Is there no one with common humanity?  Why do you plot against me?  Why won’t you tell me what you know?’

’I will, if you sit down there and endeavour to command yourself.  That is, I will tell you certain things that I have heard, and something that I have seen.  Then we will reason about them.’

Wilfrid’s brow darkened.  He prepared to listen.

‘About six weeks ago,’ the lady began, ’I went to see a friend of mine, a lady who was recovering from an illness, someone who knows Emily, though not intimately.  In her illness she was nursed by the same woman who helped poor Mrs. Hood when Emily was in her fever.  This woman, it appears, was induced to talk about Emily, and gave it as a secret that Emily’s illness had something to do with an attachment between her and Mr. Dagworthy, her father’s employer.  Her grounds for believing this were, first of all, the fact of Emily frequently uttering his name in her delirium, with words which seemed to refer to some mystery between them; then the circumstance of Mr. Dagworthy’s having, shortly after, left a note at the house, with special injunctions to the servant that it should be given into Emily’s own hands.  This story, you may imagine, surprised me not a little.  A few days later Mr. Dagworthy dined with us, and I took an opportunity of talking with him; it seemed to me certain that Emily had some special place in his thoughts.  I know, too, that he was particularly anxious throughout the time of her illness, and that of her mother.’