CHAPTER XXXVI.

MOMENTARY MADNESS.

IT would be difficult to describe the looks of the assembled party in the library at Brownlows at this moment. Jack, to whom everything was doubly complicated by the fact that the intruder was Pamela's mother, and by the feeling that his own affairs must be somehow in question, made a step forward, thinking that her business must be with him, and fell back in double consternation when she passed him, looking only at his father. Sara stood aghast, knowing nothing-not even aware that there could be anything to be anxious about-an impersonation of mere wonder and surprise. The two elder people were not surprised. Both of them knew what it meant. Mr Brownlow in a moment passed from the shock of horror and dismay which had prostrated him at first, into that perfect calm which is never consistent with ignorance or innocence. The won

der of his children would have convinced any observer of their perfect unacquaintance with the matter. But he knew all about it—he was perfectly composed and master of himself in a second. Life goes fast at such a crisis. He felt at once as if he had always known it was to end like this-always foreseen it and had been gradually prepared and wound up by degrees to meet the blow. All his uncertainty and doubt and self-delusions vanished from him on the spot. He knew who his visitor was without any explanation, and that she had come just in time-and that it was all over. Somehow he seemed to cease on the moment to be the principal in the matter. By the time Mrs Preston had come up to him, he had become a calm professional spectator, watching the case on behalf of a client. The change was curious to himself, though he had no time just then to consider how it came about.

But the intruder was not calm. On the contrary, she was struggling with intense excitement, panting, trembling, compelled to stop on her way across the room to put her hand to her side, and gasp for the half-stifled breath. She took no notice of the young people who stood by. It is doubtful even whether she was aware of their presence. She went up gasping to the man she thought her enemy. "I am in time," she said. "I have come to claim my mother's

money-the money you have robbed us of. I am in time-I know I am just in time! I have been at Doctors' Commons; it's no use telling me lies. I know everything. I've come for my mother's money -the money you've robbed from me and mine!"

Jack came forward bewildered by these extraordinary words. "This is frenzy," he said. "The Rector is right. She must be mad. Mrs Preston, come and I'll take you home. Don't let us make any row about it. She is Pamela's mother. Let me take her quietly away."

"I might be mad," said the strange apparition, "if wrong could make a woman mad. Don't talk to me of Pamela. Sir, you understand it's you I come to -it's you! Give me my mother's money! I'll not go away from here till I have justice. I'll have you taken up for a robber! I'll have you put in prison ! It's justice I want-and my rights."

"Be quiet, Jack," said Mr Brownlow; "let her alone. Go away-that is the best service you can do me. Mrs Preston, you must explain yourself. Who was your mother, and what do you want with me?"

Then she made a rush forward to him and clutched

his arm. He was standing in his former position. leaning against the mantelpiece, firm, upright, pale, a strong man still, and with his energies unbroken.

She rushed at him, a tottering, agitated woman, old and weak and half-frantic with excitement. "Give me my mother's money!" she cried, and gasped and choked, her passion being too much for her. At this instant the clock struck: it was a silvery, soft-tongued clock, and made the slow beats of time thrill into the silence. Mr Brownlow laughed when he heard it— laughed not with triumph, but with that sense of the utter futility of all calculations which sometimes comes upon the mind with a strange sense of the humour of it, at the most terrible crisis. Let it strike -what did it matter?-nothing now could deliver him from his fate.

"I

"I take you to witness I was here and claimed my money before it struck," cried the woman. was here. You can't change that. You villain, give me my mother's money! Give me my money: you've had it for five-and-twenty years!"

Compose yourself," said Mr Brownlow, speaking to her as he might have done had he been the professional adviser of the man who was involved; "sit down and take your time; you were here before twelve; you shall have all the benefit of that; now tell me what your name is, and what is your claim."

Mrs Preston sat down as he told her, and glared at him with her wild bright eyes; but notwithstand

ing the overwrought condition in which she was, she could not but recognise the calm of the voice which addressed her: a certain shade of uncertainty flickered over her countenance-she grew confused in the midst of her assurance-it seemed impossible that he could take it so quietly if he knew what she meant. And then her bodily fatigue, sleeplessness, and exhaustion were beginning to tell.

"You are trying to cheat me," she said, with difficulty restraining the impulse of her weakness to cry. "You are trying to cheat me! you know it better than I do, and I read it with my own eyes: you have had it for five-and-twenty years: and you try to face it out and cheat me now!"

Then the outburst came which had been kept back so long; she had eaten nothing all day; she had not slept the previous night; she had been travelling and rushing about till the solid earth seemed to be going round and round with her; she burst into sobbing and crying as she spoke: not tears-she was not capable of tears. When Mr Brownlow, in his extraordinary self-possession, went to a side-table to bring a decanter of sherry which had been placed there, she made an effort to rise to stop him, but even that she was unable to do. He walked across the room while his astonished children still stood and looked on. He alone had all his wits about