'None--none,' he added, 'that I can bring myself to believe.' Mrs. Baxendale could only look at him questioningly. 'She said,' Wilfrid continued, pale with the effort it cost him to speak, 'that she has no longer any affection for me.' There was another silence, of longer endurance than the last. Wilfrid was the first to break it. 'My reason for refusing to believe it is, that she said it when she had done her utmost to convince me of her earnestness in other ways, and said it in a way--How is it possible for me to believe it? It is only two months since I saw her on the Castle Hill.' 'I thought you had never been here before?' 'I have never spoken to you of that. I came and left on the same day, It was to see her before I went to Switzerland.' 'I am at a loss,' said Mrs. Baxendale. 'I can only suggest that she has had a terrible shock, and that her recovery, or seeming recovery, has been too rapid. Yet there is no trace of wandering in her talk with me.' 'Nor was there to-day. She was perfectly rational. Think of one's being driven to hope that she only _seemed_ so!' 'Did you speak of correspondence?' 'No. I said that I could not agree to what she asked of me until she had repeated it after a time. I left her scarcely knowing what I spoke. What shall I do? How can I remain in doubt such as this? I said I wished for your help, yet how can you--how can anyone--help me? Have I unconsciously been the cause of this?' 'Or has anyone else consciously been so?' asked the lady, with meaning. 'What? You think--? Is it possible?' 'You only hinted that your relatives were not altogether pleased.' Wilfrid, a light of anger flashing from his eyes, walked rapidly the length of the room. 'She admitted to me,' he said, in a suppressed voice, 'that her illness began before her father's death. It was not that that caused it. You think that someone may have interfered? My father? Impossible! He is a man of honour; he has written of her in the kindest way.'