I.—THE SHADOW OF A FEAR.

Only in the great Metropolis could the house have passed, silent, mystic, and unnoticed, without the wagging of tongues and the prying of idle curiosity. It was not as if No. 13 stood apart—Vernon-terrace was a smart row of houses, where for the most part people of mains resided. The other homesteads were bright and clean, there were boxes of flowers in the windows, and silk blinds behind. Lights gleamed in them at night, glittering carriages stood before the open doors.

So the rustiness and neglect of No. 13 were all the more remarked. It was like one horribly black, decayed tooth in an otherwise perfect set. No lights showed there, the ill-painted blinds were always down, the front steps were greasy, the panes were black with the passing of years. The neighbours occasionally alluded to No. 13 in a careless kind of way; they believed that a gentleman called Colville lived there. He was understood to be a scientific man or something of that sort. But nobody really knew, and nobody cared. Nobody had ever been inside the house, which was understood to be only partly furnished. The same sense of loneliness and mystery pervaded the interior of No. 13. The noble reception rooms on the first floor were never opened; indeed, for years they had not seen the light of day. A sense of mystery, the brooding spirit of some immeasurable trouble lay every where. And yet the black dust and hanging cobwebs rested on priceless pictures and works of art, on old tapestry, furniture, and Eastern carpets. Somebody years ago had filled an old Cellini epergne with flowers, and the blackened stalks still remained. So much could be seen by the girl who stood there looking fearsomely around with a solitary candle in her hand.

It was a kind of tradition in Vernon-terrace that an exceedingly pretty girl had been seen occasionally at No. 13. For once tradition was right, for Ailsa Lefroy was a very pretty girl indeed. Her dress was of the simplest, her hair was caught up in a very severe fashion; but all this did not detract from the girl's beauty, or rob her deep violet eyes of the sweetness of their expression. Her face was a little pale, yet the skin was clear and healthy, the little red lips were unsteady now. In age, Ailsa might have been taken for one-and-twenty. Anybody who guessed that would not have been far wrong, for she would be twenty-one on the morrow.

Five years she had spent under the roof of Archibald Colville since her father died. Five years in a dreary prison house with nobody for company but her books and her painting, the strange taciturn old servants, and an occasional glimpse of the man who called himself her guardian. Other girls tasted the delights of life, Ailsa had none of them. And the time was cl