Rowton’s face looked disturbed while Nancy was speaking. “Your father must have been off his head,” he said after a pause. “No,” she replied, “his brain is sane enough.” “He must have been off his head for the time at least,” repeated her lover; “nothing else could account for words so purposeless and wild. They are not worth your grave consideration; do not fret, sweetheart, such words can make no difference to us. You don’t suppose that I will part from the most precious thing in all the world because an old man’s brain has suddenly given way.” “If I really thought that,” said Nancy Follett. “What else could it be? but now don’t let us waste our time talking about it; you are mine and I am yours if fifty old men choose to go mad on the subject. Now, I must see that my wild bird does not wear herself out; you must have food, you shall have it; is there no one helping you to nurse your father?” “Yes, Dr. Read sent in a nurse to-day, she is upstairs now; not that there is much to do, he has lain since the afternoon in a state of stupor.” Nancy was standing now close to the fire; the bright light fell all over her; it brought a delicate colour into her cheeks and lit up her large eyes with a strange gleam. “You are the most beautiful creature in all the world,” said Rowton, with passion. She looked at him with a pained expression; her pretty dark brows were knit together. “Don’t,” she said suddenly. “I cannot listen to such words just now, they seem incongruous, they press on my heart and hurt me. Whatever you may choose to think of him, I love that old man upstairs; his fate has been a cruel one, his grief is killing him; his terrible, his awful grief is killing him, it is carrying him to his grave.” “I am a heartless brute not to sympathise with you, Nancy,” said Rowton. “What can be the grief, my dearest?” “Ah! that I dare not tell you, that is our fearful secret. Once I was a very happy girl, a thoughtless child. I wanted for nothing, I was gay as the sunshine itself. Father was a successful man, he was quite a great doctor, he had one of the largest practices in Harley Street. Then came the trouble; it was a blow sudden and awful, like a bolt from the blue. It crushed father and turned him into an old man, a man with only one bitter object in life. Everything else seemed to die in him, everything but the one consuming passion. He sold the furniture in Harley Street, and we came here because the house was going for an old song, and father wanted us to live cheaply; we have lived here ever since that blow descended on our heads, and we have saved, and saved; we have starved ourselves, we have lain cold at night, we have wanted the common comforts of the most ordinary existence, all for one terrible purpose.” “You certainly are a mysterious pair,” said Rowton with a laugh which echoed painfully in the old room. “Just whisper to me what the purpose was, Nance.”