XXI Grizel! Grizel!

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He had reached out his hand to the package and his features showed an emotion I hardly understood.

"What's this?" he murmured, feeling it with wonder, I should almost say anger. Suddenly he pulled off the wrapper, and my heart stood still in expectancy. If he quailed--and how could he help doing so if guilty--what a doubt would be removed from my own breast, what an impediment from police action! But he did not quail; he simply uttered an exclamation of intense anger, and laid the weapon back on the table without even taking the precaution of covering it up. I think he muttered an oath, but there was no fear in it, not a particle.

My disappointment was so great, my humiliation so unbounded, that, forgetting myself in my dismay, I staggered back and let the tray with all its contents slip from my hands. The crash that followed stopped Mr. Grey in the act of rising. But it did something more. It awoke a cry from the adjoining room which I shall never forget. While we both started and turned to see from whom this grievous sound had sprung, a man came stumbling toward us with his hands before his eyes and this name wild on his lips:

"Grizel! Grizel!"

Mrs. Fairbrother's name! and the man--