“What am I to do down at Bedsworth?” she asked.

“I want you to be Miss Harston’s companion.  She’ll be lonely, and will need some other woman in the house to look after her.”

“Curse her!” cried Rebecca, springing to her feet with flashing eyes.  “You are still thinking of her, then!  She must have this; she must have that!  Everything else is as dirt before her.  I’ll not serve her—­so there!  You can knock me down if you like.”

“Rebecca,” said Ezra slowly, “do you hate Kate Harston?”

“From the bottom of my soul,” she answered.

“Well, if you hate her, I tell you that I hate her a thousand times more.  You thought that I was fond of her.  All that is over now, and you may set your mind at ease.”

“Why do you want her so well cared for, then?” asked the girl suspiciously.

“I want some one who feels towards her as I do to be by her side.  If she were never to come back from Bedsworth it would be nothing to me.”

“What makes you look at me so strangely?” she said, shrinking away from his intense gaze.

“Never mind.  You go.  You will understand many things in time which seem strange to you now.  At present if you will do what I ask you will oblige me greatly.  Will you go?”

“Yes, I will go.”

“There’s a good lass.  Give us a kiss, my girl.  You have the right spirit in you.  I’ll let you know when the train goes to-morrow, and I will write to my father to expect you.  Now, off with you, or you’ll have them gossiping downstairs.  Good night.”

“Good night, Mister Ezra,” said the girl, with her hand upon the handle of the library door.  “You’ve made my heart glad this night.  I live in hope—­ever in hope.”

“I wonder what the deuce she hopes about,” the young merchant said to himself as she closed the door behind her.  “Hopes I’ll marry her, I suppose.  She must be of a very sanguine disposition.  A girl like that might be invaluable down at Bedsworth.  If we had no other need for her, she would be an excellent spy.”  He lay for some little time on the couch with bent brow and pursed lips, musing over the possibilities of the future.

While this dialogue had been going on in the library of Eccleston Square, Tom Dimsdale was still wending his way homewards with a feeling of weight in his mind and a presentiment of misfortune which overshadowed his whole soul.  In vain he assured himself that this disappearance of Kate’s was but temporary, and that the rumour of an engagement between her and Ezra was too ridiculous to be believed for a moment.  Argue it as he would, the same dread, horrible feeling of impending trouble weighed upon him.  Impossible as it was to imagine that Kate was false to him, it was strange that on the very day that this rumour reached his ears she should disappear from London.  How bitterly he regretted now that he had allowed himself to be persuaded by John Girdlestone into ceasing to