' The servant said I could do so,
if you came that way, but that you let yourself in sometimes with your
own key by the back-garden gate; and if you did this, she would take
care to let you know of my visit. I mention these trifles, to show you
that there was no pre-meditated deceit in my mind when I came to the
house.
"I waited a weary time, and you never came: I don't know whether my
impatience made me think so, or whether the large fire burning made the
room really as hot as I felt it to be--I only know that, after a while,
I passed through the curtains into the inner room, to try the cooler
atmosphere.
"I walked to the long window which leads into the back garden, to look
out, and almost at the same time I heard the door opened--the door of
the room I had just left, and your voice and the voice of some
other woman, a stranger to me, talking. The stranger was one of the
parlor-boarders, I dare say. I gathered from the first words you
exchanged together, that you had met in the passage--she on her way
downstairs, and you on your way in from the back garden. Her next
question and your next answer informed me that this person was a friend
of my sister's, who felt a strong interest in her, and who knew that
you had just returned from a visit to Norah.
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