“Paul!  Paul! what is the matter?  You look as if you had been turned to stone by gazing on the Gorgon’s head; Paul!  Paul!”

“Miriam, did your mother know this handwriting?” he asked, in a husky, almost inaudible voice.

“No!”

“Did she suspect it?”

“No!”

“Did you know or suspect it?”

“No!  I was a child when I received it, remember.  I have never seen it since.”

“Not when you put it in my hand, just now?”

“No, I never looked at the writing?”

“That was most strange that you should not have glanced at the handwriting when you handed it to me.  Why didn’t you?  Were you afraid to look at it?  Miram! why do you turn away your head?  Miriam! answer me—­do you know the handwriting?”

“No, Paul, I do not know it—­do you?”

“No! no! how should I?  But Miriam, your head is still averted.  Your very voice is changed.  Miriam! what mean you?  Tell me once for all.  Do you suspect the handwriting?”

“How should I?  Do you, Paul?”

“No! no!  I don’t suspect it.”

They seemed afraid to look each other in the face; and well they might be, for the written agony on either brow; they seemed afraid to hear the sound of each other’s words; and well they might be, for the hollow, unnatural sound of either voice.

“It cannot be!  I am crazy, I believe.  Let me clear my—­oh, Heaven!  Miriam! did—­was—­do you know whether there was any one in particular on familiar terms with Miss Mayfield?”

“No one out of the family, except Miss Thornton.”

“’Out of the family’—­out of what family?”

“Ours, at the cottage.”

“Was—­did—­I wonder if my brother knew her intimately?”

“I do not know; I never saw them in each other’s company but twice in my life.”

The youth breathed a little freer.

“Why did you ask, Paul?”

“No matter, Miriam.  Oh!  I was a wretch, a beast to think—­”

“What, Paul?”

“There are such strange resemblances in—­in—­in—­What are you looking at me so for, Miriam?”

“To find your meaning.  In what, Paul—­strange resemblances in what?”

“Why, in faces.”

“Why, then, so there are—­and in persons, also; and sometimes in fates; but we were talking of handwritings, Paul.”

“Were we?  Oh, true.  I am not quite right, Miriam.  I believe I have confined myself too much, and studied too hard.  I am really out of sorts; never mind me!  Please hand me those foreign letters, love.”

Miriam was unfolding and examining them; but all in a cold, stony, unnatural way.

“Paul,” she asked, “wasn’t it just eight years this spring since your brother went to Scotland to fetch you?”

“Yes; why?”

“Wasn’t it to Glasgow that he went?”

“Yes; why?”

“Were not you there together in March and April, 182-?”