“Alone?”

“Yes, sir.”  The man preceded him, but before his name had been announced Alison was standing, her book in her hand, gazing at him with startled eyes, his name rising, a low cry, to her lips.

“John!”

He took the book from her, gently, and held her hands.

“Something has happened!” she said.  “Tell me—­I can bear it.”

He saw instantly that her dread was for him, and it made his task the harder.

It’s your brother, Alison.”

“Preston!  What is it?  He’s done something——­”

Hodder shook his head.

“He died—­to-night.  He is at Mr. Bentley’s.”

It was like her that she did not cry out, or even speak, but stood still, her hands tightening on his, her breast heaving.  She was not, he knew, a woman who wept easily, and her eyes were dry.  And he had it to be thankful for that it was given him to be with her, in this sacred relationship, at such a moment.  But even now, such was the mystery that ever veiled her soul, he could not read her feelings, nor know what these might be towards the brother whose death he announced.

“I want to tell you, first, Alison, to prepare you,” he said.

Her silence was eloquent.  She looked up at him bravely, trustfully, in a way that made him wince.  Whatever the exact nature of her suffering, it was too deep for speech.  And yet she helped him, made it easier for him by reason of her very trust, once given not to be withdrawn.  It gave him a paradoxical understanding of her which was beyond definition.

“You must know—­you would have sometime to know that there was a woman he loved, whom he intended to marry—­but she was separated from him.  She was not what is called a bad woman, she was a working girl.  I found her, this summer, and she told me the story, and she has been under the care of Mr. Bentley.  She disappeared two or three days ago.  Your brother met her again, and he was stricken with apoplexy while with her this evening.  She brought him to Mr. Bentley’s house.”

“My father—­bought her and sent her away.”

“You knew?”

“I heard a little about it at the time, by accident.  I have always remembered it . . . .  I have always felt that something like this would happen.”

Her sense of fatality, another impression she gave of living in the deeper, instinctive currents of life, had never been stronger upon him than now. . . .  She released his hands.

“How strange,” she said, “that the end should have come at Mr. Bentley’s!  He loved my mother—­she was the only woman he ever loved.”

It came to Hodder as the completing touch of the revelation he had half glimpsed by the bedside.

“Ah,” he could not help exclaiming, “that explains much.”