Breathlessly she felt herself upon the precipitous edge of ultimate horror.

For Judge Harvey--Judge Harvey of all persons--to be the one to discover her amid her humiliating circumstances! Dimly she heard Jack talk on, explaining in casual tone: "You know, Matilda, Uncle Bob has always had the general oversight of the house when it's been closed during summers; and he's always made it his business to drop in occasionally to see that everything's all right.
I got him word we were here, and he dropped in this evening to call on us--and along came this awful rain and we coaxed him to stay the night.

Uncle Bob and you are lucky, Matilda, you can both come and go without arousing any suspicion." Only the Judge!...

Yet, for all her horror, a new phase of the general predicament filtered into such consciousness as she now possessed.
Judge Harvey, irate purchaser of autograph letters, and Mr.Pyecroft, _alias_ Thomas Preston, profuse producer of the same, were under the same roof and were about to meet.

What would happen when they came face to face ?--for she remembered now that a bad likeness of Thomas Preston had several times appeared in the papers.