She did, indeed, fall on her knees as she spoke, and stretched out her clasped hands towards him. For one second their eyes met, then he turned his way and said, as quietly as ever, "I am going to Mr. and Miss Maxfield at once, with the most effectual apology which could be offered to them--namely, that you are a maniac, and in any case not responsible for your actions, nor to be treated like a rational being." She staggered up to her feet. "Very well," she gasped out, "then I shall not spare you--nor her. I have had a letter from my uncle. He has told me what you accused me of. I went to the office. That man there told me the same. The notes that I paid away to Ravell--you 'wondered'--_you_ were 'uneasy!' Why, you gave me them yourself. Oh, Ancram, how _could_ you have the heart? I wish I was dead!" "I wish to God you were!" She was standing close to the edge of the steep, slippery bank; and when he said these words she staggered and, with a little heart-broken moan, put out her hand to clutch at him, groping like a blind person. He shook off her grasp with a sudden rough movement, and the next instant she was deep in the dark ice-cold water. CHAPTER XX. It was past mid-day when a loud peal at the bell of Ivy Lodge startled the women in the kitchen. Polly ran to the front door to open it. There stood her master, who pushed quickly into the house past her. "Is your mistress come back?" he asked almost breathlessly. "No, sir! Oh, mercy me, what's the matter? What has happened?" she cried, for his face showed undisguised terror and agitation. He sat down in the dining-room and asked for a glass of wine. Having drunk it at a gulp, he said, "I cannot understand it. I have been nearly to Whitford along the meadow-path; I didn't try the other way, but then she would not have wandered towards Duckwell, surely! Then I crossed the fields and came back by the road, looking everywhere, and asking every one I met. Nothing to be seen of her. Your mistress's manner has been so strange of late. You must have noticed it. I--I--am afraid--I cannot help being afraid that some terrible thing has happened to her. I have had a dreadful weight and presentiment on my mind all the morning. Where can she be?" "Oh no, no, sir. Never fear! She'll be all safe somewheres or other. She'll just have gone wandering on into the town. She _have_ been strange in her ways, poor thing! and we couldn't but see it, sir. But she can't have come to no harm. There's nothing to hurt her here-about." Thus honest Polly, consolingly. But she was infected, too, by the terror in her master's white face. "You don't know," said he tremulously, "what reason I have for uneasiness." He drew out from his pocket-book a torn scrap of paper with some writing on it. "I found this on the floor by her desk this morning. This is what alarmed me so before I went out, but I wouldn't say anything about it then."