Our eyes met. In hers there was a deep, earnest look as though she were really solicitous of my welfare, yet I fancied somehow that those clear blue eyes wavered beneath my steady, searching glance. She watched me, reading me as easily as she would have read black letters on a white page. "I was taken suddenly ill--the heat perhaps," I answered with affected carelessness. "I had run down, the doctor said. It was nothing very serious." She gave vent to a perceptible sigh of relief, then smiling sweetly as she ever did, said: "Well, it is indeed a pleasure to welcome you here again to-day." She still wore that brooch, the quaint little playing-card which had betrayed her visit to Morris Lowry. Its sight sent a strange thrill through me, for I remembered the object of her visit to that dark, dirty, obscure herbalist's. "The pleasure is mutual, believe me, Eva," I answered, putting away from me instantly the gruesome thought oppressing me. "Through this whole month I have thought only of you." She sighed, in an instant serious. Then glancing back to assure herself that there were no eavesdroppers, she said, "It would be far better, Mr. Urwin--Frank--if you could leave me and forget." "But I can't," I said, rising quickly and again taking her soft white hand. "You know, Eva, how deeply, how sincerely, how devotedly I love you; how I am entirely yours for ever." I spoke simply and directly what I felt; I was calmer than I had been when I rowed her beneath the willows' shade. "Ah, no!" she cried in a pained voice, rising to her feet with sudden resolution. "You really must not say this. I will not let you sacrifice yourself. I will not allow you to thus--" "It is no sacrifice," I protested, quickly interrupting. "I love you, Eva, with all my soul. One woman alone in all the world holds me beneath the spell of her grace, her charm and her sweetness. It is yourself. Every hour I think only of you; ever before me your face rises in my day-dreams, and in those moments when I see your sweet smiles I tell myself that no other woman can ever have a place in my heart. Ah! you cannot know how fondly I love you," I said, raising the hand tenderly to my lips and imprinting a kiss upon it. "If you could only know you would never treat me with this cold, calm indifference." Her bosom rose and fell slowly, and she was silent. I fancied that she shuddered slightly. At that moment my position struck me as an extremely strange one, declaring love to one whom an expert detective suspected of having made a cowardly attempt upon my life. Was it just? I asked myself. Yes, in this I was justified, for I loved her, even though I had more than once been inclined to agree with Boyd in his misgivings. "I was not aware of any indifference," she faltered at last, raising her great eyes, so clear and earnest, for an instant to mine. "I had merely urged you to reflect."