"No, no--I cannot--I cannot see her to-night!" The General was instantly at her side. "Enid, my dear, what do you mean? Your aunt wants to see you. She won't be vexed with you--I'll make it all right with her," he added, in a lower tone. "She has been terribly anxious about you. Come--I will take you to her room." "Not just now, uncle--not to-night," said the girl, in a tone of mingled pain and dread. "I--I can't bear it--I am ill--I must be alone now!" "My dear child, you must go to bed and rest. I'll explain it all to Flossy. She will come to see you." "No, no--I can't see any one! Forgive me, uncle; I hardly know what I am saying or doing. I shall be better to-morrow. Till then--till then at least I must be left in peace!" She broke from his detaining hand with something so like violence, that the General looked after her in wonder as she ran up-stairs. "She must be ill indeed!" he murmured thoughtfully to himself, as he wended his way to his wife's boudoir, to make his report to Flossy. Meanwhile Enid's progress up-stairs was barred for a moment by her little playmate and scholar, Dick, who ran out of his nursery to greet her with a cry of joy. To his surprise and mortification, cousin Enid did not stop to kiss him--did not even give him a pleasant word or smile. With a stifled cry she disengaged her frock from his hand, breaking from him as she had broken from the General just before, and sped away to her own room. He heard her turn the key in her door, and, for the first time realising the enormity of the woe that had come upon him--the unprecedented fact that cousin Enid had been unkind--he lifted up his voice and bursted into a storm of sobs, which would at any ordinary time have brought her instantly to his side to comfort and caress. But this time Enid either did not hear or did not heed. She was crouching down by the side of her bed, with her face hidden in the coverlet, and her hands pressed over her ears, as if to exclude all sound of the world without; and between the difficult passionate sobs by which her whole frame was shaken, one phrase escaped from her lips from time to time--a phrase which would have been unintelligible enough to an ordinary hearer, but would have recalled a long and shameful story to the minds of Florence Vane and one other woman in the world. "Sabina Meldreth's child!" she muttered to herself not knowing what she said. "How can I bear it? Oh, my poor uncle! Sabina Meldreth's child!" CHAPTER XIX.