An air of respectability and the presence of good taste characterized the house in Queen-street, Mayfair, now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Routh. These things were inseparable from a dwelling of Harriet's. She had the peculiar feminine talent for embellishing the place she lived in, however simple and small were the means at her disposal. The lodgings at South Molton-street had never had the comfortless look and feeling of lodgings, and now there was apparently no lack of money to make the new home all that a house of its size and capabilities need be. Harriet moved about her present dwelling, not as she had moved about her former home, indeed, with happy alacrity, but with the same present judgment, the same critical eye; and though all she did now was done mechanically, it was done thoroughly.  
Harriet was very restless on the day that was to bring George Dallas to their new residence. She had duly received his message from Jim Swain, and though the keen eye of the boy, who was singularly observant of her in every particular that came under his notice, had detected that the intelligence imparted a shock to her, she had preserved her composure wonderfully, in conveying the unwelcome news to her husband. Routh had received it with far less calmness. He felt in a moment that the delay of Harriet's projected letter, a delay prescribed by himself, had induced the return of Dallas, and angry with himself for the blunder, he was angry with her that she had not foreseen the risk. He was often angry with Harriet now; a strange kind of dislike to her arose frequently in his base and ungrateful heart, and the old relations between them had undergone a change, unavowed by either, but felt keenly by both. The strength of character on which Routh knew he could rely to any extent, which he knew would never fail him or its owner, made him strangely afraid, in the midst of all the confidence it inspired, and he was constrained in his wife's presence, and haunted out of it.
 
Stewart Routh had never been a rough-spoken man; the early tradition of his education had preserved him from the external coarseness of a vagabond life, but the underlying influences of an evil temper asserted themselves at times. Thus when Harriet told him gently, and with her blue eyes bright with reassuring encouragement, that Dallas was in England, and would be with them on the morrow, he turned upon her with an angry oath. She shrank back from him for a moment, but the next, she said, gently:
 
"We must meet this, Stewart, like all the rest, and it can be done."
 
"How?" he said, rudely; "how is it to be met?"
 
"I will meet it, Stewart," she replied. "Trust me: you have often done so, and never had cause to regret the consequence. I am changed, I know. I have not so much quickness and readiness as I had, but I have no less courage. Remember what my influence over George Dallas was; it is still unchanged; let me use it to the utmost of my ability. If it fails, why then"--she spoke very slowly, and leaned her hand heavily on his shoulder with the words,--"then we have but to do what I at least have always contemplated."
 
Their eyes met, and they looked steadily at each other for some moments; then withdrawing his gaze from her with difficulty, Routh said, sullenly, "Very well, let it be so; you must see him first: but I suppose I shall have to see him; I can't escape that, can I?"
 
She looked at him with a queer glance for a moment, and the shadow of a smile just flickered over her lips. Could he escape? That was his thought, his question. Did she ever ask it for herself? But the impression, irresistible to the woman's keen perception, was only momentary. She answered the base query instantly.
 
"No, you cannot; the thing is impossible. But I will see him first, and alone; then if I succeed with him, no risk can come of your seeing him; if I fail, the danger must be faced."
 
He turned sulkily away, and leaned upon the window-frame, looking idly into the street.
 
"You don't know when he will be here, I suppose?" he said, presently.
 
"I do not; but I fancy early in the day."
 
"It's too bad. I am sick of this. The thing is over now. Why is it always cropping up?"
 
He spoke to himself rather than to her; but she heard him, and the colour flew over her pale face at his words. He left the room soon after, and then Harriet sat down in the weary way that had become habitual to her, and murmured:
 
"It is done and over; and he wonders why it is always cropping up, and I--"
 
Stewart Routh did not return home until late that night. Such absences had become common now, and Harriet made no comment then or ever. How she passed the hours of solitude he did not inquire, and, indeed, she could hardly have told. On this particular evening she had employed herself on the close and attentive perusal of a number of letters. They were all written by George Dallas, and comprised the whole of his correspondence with her. She read them with attentive eye and knitted brow; and when she locked the packet up in her desk again, she looked, as Mrs. Brookes had seen her, like a woman who had a purpose, and who clearly saw her way to its fulfilment.
 
But the next day Harriet was restless. She could do the thing that lay before her, but she wanted the time for doing it to be come; she wanted to get it over. If this were weakness, then in this Harriet was weak.
 
Immediately after breakfast Stewart Routh went out. Only a few words had been exchanged between him and Harriet on the subject of George's expected visit, and Harriet had gone to the drawing-room when George came. She met him with the old frank welcome which he remembered so well, and, in answer to his inquiry for Routh, said she was momentarily expecting him.
 
"You know what brought me back to England," George said, when he was seated, and the first greeting was over; "you got my message?"
 
"That bad news had reached you. Yes," replied Harriet. "I was just about to write to you. You would have had my letter to-day. I learned from the newspapers that your mother was ill and--"
 
"And went to see about it for me. I know all your goodness, Mrs. Routh, and can never thank you for it half enough. It is only of a piece, though, with all your goodness to me. You have always been the best and truest of friends. My old nurse told me all about your visit. God bless you, Mrs. Routh." And George Dallas took her hand, and, for the second time in his life, kissed it.
 
There was a pause, a dangerous pause. Harriet felt it, for her heart was beating thickly, and her face was not under such command but that the interested eyes which were looking into it might read the traces of a deep and painful emotion.
 
"You have been comforted by your visit to Poynings," she said. "You have more hope and relief about your mother? Mrs. Brookes has told you all particulars."
 
"Yes, Mrs. Routh, I did hear all the particulars, and I also made an extraordinary and terrible discovery in connection with that illness."
 
"Indeed!" said Harriet, leaning towards him with the liveliest interest and concern in every feature of her face. "It is not that the illness is of a hopeless nature, I hope?"
 
"I trust not," he said, solemnly; "but, Mrs. Routh, my mother has been nearly killed by being obliged to suspect me of a dreadful crime."
 
"A dreadful crime! You, Mr. Dallas! What do you mean?"
 
"I mean," said Dallas, "that a murder has been committed, in which I would appear to have been implicated. I know what I am about to tell you will agitate and distress you, Mrs. Routh, and one of the most mysterious points of a mysterious subject is, that it should be my lot to tell it to you." He hesitated, then went on: "I don't know whether I ought to tell you all that I have heard. I have to consult Routh on some important matters, so that it is the more unfortunate that he is out of the way, as no time must be lost in what I have to do."
 
The occasion had come now, and Harriet was equal to it. It was with a smile, serious but quite unembarrassed, that she said:
 
"Don't depose me from the position of your confidant, George." She called him by his Christian name for the first time. "You know Stewart has no secret from me. Whatever you would tell to him, tell to me. I have more time at your disposal than he has, though not more friendship. In this matter count us as one. Indeed," she added, with a skilful assumption of playfulness, which did not, however, alter the gravity of George's manner, "as I am your correspondent, I claim precedence by prescriptive right."
 
"I hardly know how to tell you, Mrs. Routh; all the circumstances are so shocking, and so very, very strange. You and Routh have been rather surprised, have you not, by the sudden disappearance of Deane? Routh always thought him an odd, eccentric, unaccountable sort of fellow, coming nobody knew whence, and likely to go nobody knew whither; but yet it has surprised you and Routh a little that, since the day we were to have dined together in the Strand, Deane has never turned up, hasn't it?"
 
The strength and self-control which formed such striking features in Harriet's character were severely tried, almost beyond their limits, by the expectation of the revelation which George was about to make; but there was not a questioning tone in her voice, not a quiver on her lip, as the minutes passed by, while she won him more and more securely by her calm interest and friendliness. His growing anxiety to see Routh confirmed her in the belief that he knew all that his mother and Mrs. Brookes had known. Remembering the agony she had suffered when she and George had last talked together, and feeling that the present crisis was scarcely less momentous, she rallied all her powers--and they were considerable--and asked him boldly what it was he had to communicate to her. In a voice of the deepest solemnity, he said, taking her hand in his:
 
"The man who has been murdered, of whose murder my mother was led to suspect me, was Philip Deane!"
 
"Good God!" cried Harriet, and shrunk back in her chair, covering her face with her hands.
 
He had reason to say that the news he had to tell her would agitate and distress her. Her whole frame crept and trembled, and a chill moisture broke out on her smooth forehead and pale shivering cheeks. George was alarmed at her distress, and she knew by the intensity of her emotion, now that the words she had been expecting were spoken, how much her nervous system had suffered in the long struggle she had fought out with such success. He tried to calm her, and loved and admired her all the more for her keen womanly feeling.
 
"Horrible, most horrible!" she murmured, her eyes still hidden in her shaking hands. "But how do you know? Tell me all you know."
 
Then George told her without omission or reservation. She listened eagerly, greedily, and as the narrative proceeded she became quite calm. George dwelt on his astonishment that Routh had not made the discovery which had forced itself on him, but Harriet disposed of that part of the matter in a moment.
 
"You forget," she said, "he was not in London. When you came to me, on your return from Amherst, do you not remember I told you Stewart was away, hiding from his creditors, poor fellow? He never heard of the murder, very likely; he never interests himself in such horrors. Indeed, he never mentioned anything about it to me, and of course he must have known at once that the man was Deane. The very name of the tavern in the Strand where he was to have dined himself would have suggested the idea."
 
"Precisely so," said George; "that was the thing which puzzled me so completely, and made me anxious to see him."
 
"The strangeness of the coincidence," said Harriet, "is as remarkable as the event is horrible. It only proves how mistaken are our notions of the laws of chance. What could be more wildly improbable than that, living in the midst of London, and within constant reach of the talk and speculation about it, Stewart and I should have known nothing of the matter?"
 
"Very extraordinary indeed," said George; "one of those facts which would be denounced as too unnatural, if they were told in fiction. And how unfortunate! What a terrible mystery Routh might have cleared up!"
 
"And yet," Harriet replied, with a furtive glance at Dallas, full of keen and searching expression, "what could he have told, beyond the fact that he had known the man under the name of Deane? After all, it comes to that, and to no more, doesn't it?"
 
"To no more, my dear Mrs. Routh? To a great deal more. When we tell the police what we know, there will be not only an identification of the body, but an explanation of the motive."
 
"I don't quite understand you," said Harriot; and as she spoke, there came a click in her throat, as there had come when she and George Dallas had last spoken together.
 
Would it ever be over? Should her purpose ever be gained?
 
"Don't you?" said George, surprised, "and you so quick, too. But no wonder you are upset by this; it is so dreadful when one has known the person, is it not? But you will see in a moment that our being able to depose to the large sum of money and the jewels in the poor fellow's possession will make the motive quite plain. They have got a notion now that he was a foreigner, and that the motive was political, whereas it was of course simply a robbery. He resisted, I suppose, and was killed in the scuffle."
 
"Does the report read like that?" asked Harriet, faintly.
 
"It simply says he was stabbed," said George; "but it is plain that all the newspapers took up the political-murder notion at once, and then, of course, their reports would be made to fit their theory. No doubt some ruffian did it who knew that he had a large sum about him that day. Very likely he had been traced from the City; he had been there to get some securities. I can swear to his having told me that, at all events. How very ill you look, Mrs. Routh! This ghastly story has been too much for you. I don't think you ever liked poor Deane, but no one could know of a man's coming to such an untimely end, if he was ever such a bad fellow, and not feel it, especially you. I wish I had not said anything. It would have been better for Routh to have told you this."
 
"No, no," said Harriet. "Indeed it is better that I should hear it from you, and you are mistaken in supposing I am so much overcome entirely on account of--on account of--"
 
"The murder? Yes?" asked George, looking anxiously at her.
 
"It is all dreadful; no one in the world can feel it t............