"For ever never an-naye!" That promise anyhow had been kept as a Pentreath should have kept it! CHAPTER VII Early dawn in a house where the new-dead lie unheeding whether it be darkness or day. Dawn when those who have seen the light of life fade from a beloved face watch the slow sunlight steal once more over the edge of the world, and claim all things for its own. Yet watching alone, how peaceful such a dawn may be, when one can face death, not as a thing apart, but as a part of life; when there is no need to cloud its kindly form with sentimentalities, when we need not drug ourselves into disregarding its dignity by some narcotic of belief in life to come, when it is enough to feel that this life has passed where all life goes. In the old Keep, however, where the master lay dead in his study among his fishing-rods and guns, as they had left him till the inquest should be over, there was no one near enough to the dead man so to watch, for Helen was still unconscious in her room upstairs. Dr. Ramsay, whose hands were full with many claimants on his care, spoke of a severe nervous crisis, which had evidently been coming on for some time. Her best chance was this semi-cataleptic state from which she would recover in her own good time. So she lay in her simple white room, on her simple little bed, and the dawn stole in slowly through the open window bringing the dayspring song of birds with it. But she was not there. She might have been with her father for all the bystanders could tell. Ned, his face drawn with pain from the fractured arm over which Dr. Ramsay had instantly looked severe, but for which Ned refused to lay himself up absolutely until certain necessary details had been arranged, looked in and envied her. He had told the doctor of her visit to his room, and his wild stern-chase of her to Betty Cam's chair, and of his wonder--a wonder that grew as he thought over it--as to how she could possibly have got home, changed her dress and come on in the Wrexham's motor in so short a space of time. Still she had done it. Evidently she had done it, the doctor had replied guardedly, and there, in the stress of many calls, the subject had dropped. And yet as Ned went about giving orders in hopes of lessening anxieties and distress, he was remembering the strange unkenned look he had noticed on his cousin's face. Was it possible that--No! it was impossible. Anyhow he had no time to think it over as yet.