“He says it would not have paid either him nor me. He wanted me to remain here until he had succeeded in finding out who I was, and what that rascal Bradfield’s motive was in keeping me shut up. But he hasn’t been able to find out yet, and beyond the fact that I now know my surname, a piece of information which I owe to you, I am as much in the dark as I was when he first shut me up.” Chris mused for a few minutes without speaking. Then she said, half to herself: “I wonder whether Mr. Marrable could help us?” Then in a different tone, “Won’t you see Mr. Bradfield? Won’t you ask him for an explanation? He has been kind to mamma and me. I don’t want to think he is so wicked as to have known that you were sane! And yet----” She thought of the drugged wine, of the fire, and she shuddered. Dick interrupted her. “I have seen him,” he said, shortly. “I have asked for an explanation. But he will give none, at least none to satisfy me.” “And you are going to rest satisfied _not_ to be satisfied?” cried Chris, almost with indignation. “I don’t know what I shall do. At present I am going back to town. I had some work to do here.” He touched the little sketch which she still held in her hand. “My pastime in the days of captivity has become something more than a pastime now. I had undertaken to make a series of sketches of the sea and shore down here for a dealer----” “Yes, yes, I know. I found that out,” said Chris, blushing at his look of tender surprise. He kissed her again as he went on: “But I have found that I must see my cunning old Stelfox first, and tell him what Bradfield has said. Knowing the man better than I do, he may understand better than I Bradfield’s motive for behaving generously.” “Behaving generously?” echoed Chris, interrogatively. “Yes, he will pay my passage out to Melbourne to make enquiries about some property which he believes has been left to me.” “Then don’t go,” cried Chris, impulsively. “You have had no reason for trusting him before; why should you trust him now?” Dick hesitated. “It does seem rather a slender chance of fortune, doesn’t it?” he said at last. “But it’s the only one I have. Remember, I not only have to live, but I want to keep a wife too.” She bent her head, but he heard a little sigh which had no sorrow in it. “Now I can just keep myself by my sketches; I can do nothing else, and I shouldn’t like to see you in anything but pretty frocks.” “I believe,” said Chris, solemnly, jumping to a conclusion, “that Mr. Bradfield has got some money belonging to you, for they say that your father was a rich man.”