Before I could utter a word, he had quitted the office.

Amazed and bewildered, I glanced back towards the being who was the cause of this emotion, and whom I now regarded with intense interest.
She had sunk down into Harrison's vacant seat, her elbows supported on her knees, and her head resting between the palms of her hands: her face completely concealed from observation.

"Dinah North," I whispered to myself; "that is a name I never heard before.

Who the deuce can she be ?" With a flushed cheek and hurried step, I hastened to my uncle's study to deliver her message.
I found him alone: he was seated at the table, looking over a long roll of parchment.

He was much displeased at the interruption, and reproved me in a stern voice for disobeying his positive orders; and, by way of conciliation, I repeated my errand.
"Tell that woman," he cried, in a voice hoarse with emotion, "that I _will not_ see her! nor any one belonging to her." "The mystery thickens," thought I."What can all this mean ?" On re-entering the office, I found the old woman huddled up in her wet clothes, in the same dejected attitude in which I had left her.