"Yes, it is I," she answers, almost inaudibly, trembling all over.
His first impulse seems to be to rush away from her, to pass quickly upstairs; his second takes him to her side.
"In Heaven's name, what brings you here?" he asks, in a voice almost as low as her own, from intense repressed emotion.
No answer. His voice has carried her back, across the gulf of Jack's death, of her own servitude and failing health, to that night when, in the starry Felton fields, she had stood by his side, his beloved, promised wife. She is silent—struggling with a strong, vile, degrading temptation to fling down her tired head upon the shoulder of Miss Blessington's affianced husband, and weep out loud.
"Are you on a visit here?" he asks again, with stern brevity.
"Yes," she answers, bitterly, strengthened by his tone, in which there is small kindness, and much wrath; "I am paid fifty pounds a year to visit here."
"What do you mean?"
"I am Mr. and Mrs. Blessington's 'companion.'"
"Good God! You are here always, then?"
"Always."