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The feeling and aspect of the hour were precisely similar to those under which the steward had left the house the evening previous, excepting that apparently unearthly reversal of natural sequence, which is caused by the world getting lighter instead of darker

'The tearful gliuid daas just sufficient to reveal to the thickly in the channels by the roadside, ever and anon loudly tapped on by heavy drops of water, which the boughs above had collected froed in a deep conversation, and had proceeded about twenty yards by a cross route, in the direction of the turnpike road, when the for

She rapped in a grey waterproof cloak, the hood of which was drawn over her head and closely round her face--so closely that her eyes were the sole features uncovered

With this one exception of her appearance there, the most perfect stillness and silence pervaded the steward's residence from basement to chimney Not a shutter was open; not a twine of sateway she stood still and listened for two, or possibly three minutes, till she beca the pair she stepped back, with the apparent intention of letting the to avoid observation But looking at her watch, and returning it rapidly to her pocket, as if surprised at the lateness of the hour, she hurried out again, and across the park by a still more oblique line than that traced by Owen and his sister

These in theit as the wo for a gate or stile, by which she, too, round

Their conversation, of which every as clear and distinct, in the still air of the dawn, to the distance of a quarter of a mile, reached her ears, and withdrew her attention frohts whatsoever Thus arrested she stood for an instant as precisely in the attitude of Ien by the cave of Belarius, as if she had studied the position from the play When they had advanced a few steps, she followed thee

'Do you believe in such odd coincidences?' said Cytherea

'How do you mean, believe in theh--that is, two disconnected events will fall strangely together by chance, and people scarcely notice the fact beyond saying, "Oddly enough it happened that so and so were the same," and so on But when three such events coincide without any apparent reason for the coincidence, it seems as if theretogether in that ular as two cases of coincidence which are distinct' 'Well, of course: what a mathematical head you have, Cytherea! But I don't see so much to marvel at in our case That the man who kept the public-house in which Miss Aldclyffe fainted, and who found out her nahbourhood, is accounted for by the fact that she got hiue That you carove' 'Ah, but look at this Miss Aldclyffe is the woman our father first loved, and I have coet over that' Froue like an elderly divine on the designs of Providence which were apparent in such conjunctures, and went into a variety of details connected with Miss Aldclyffe's history