"You must please not say any more, Mr. Chandos. If I had nowhere else to go to, it would be a different thing; but I have Miss Barlieu's house." "And suppose you had not that? Would you make yourself contented and stay?" "Yes," I said, rashly. "Then be happy from this moment. Miss Barlieu's house is a barred one to you at present." Something like a leap of joy seemed to take my heart. His tone of truth was not to be mistaken. "Lady Chandos had a note from Miss Annette on Saturday," he said, his beautiful truthful eyes fixed on my face with the same steady earnestness that they had been all along. "Amidst other news it contained the unpleasant tidings that fever had broken out at Nulle; one of their young ladies had been seized with it, and was lying very ill; and another was sickening." "Oh, Mr. Chandos!" "So you see we should not allow you to go there just now. Neither would the Miss Barlieus receive you. As my mother observed, that news settled the question." I remained silent: in my shock and perplexity. "Fever seems to be busy this autumn," he remarked, carelessly. "It is in this neighbourhood; it is in Paris; it is in Nulle: and probably in a great many more places." "But, Mr. Chandos! what am I to do?" "There is only one thing that you can do—or that Lady Chandos would allow you to do: and that is, stay here. Not another word, Miss Hereford. You can't help yourself, you know," he added, laughing; "and we are happy to have you." "But the objection that Lady Chandos feels to having any one?" "Ah well—you will not be a dangerous visitor. If the worst came to the worst, we shall have to enlist you on our side, and make you take a vow of fidelity to Chandos and its interests." He was speaking in a laughing joking way, so that one could not tell whether his words were jest or earnest. Still they were curious ones. "That is the situation, young lady. You can't help yourself, you see, if you would. How much money will you have?" "Oh, sir, none. I do not require it, if I am not to go. I wish—as I am to stay here—I could make myself useful to some one." "So you can; you can be useful to me. I will constitute you my head-nurse and walking companion. I shall use your shoulder at will until my foot has its free use again. Take care I don't tire you out." He had kept my hand in his all that while, and now those deep blue speaking eyes of his, gazing still into mine, danced with merriment or pleasure. A thrill of rapture ran through me, and I never asked myself wherefore. Could it be that I was learning to love Mr. Chandos? I sat in the oak parlour through the live-long day; I had nowhere else to sit but in my bedroom. Dangerous companionship!—that of an attractive man like Mr. Chandos.