'"Oh, Winnie, how I must have skeared you! I dare say Mr. D'Arcy has told you that I've been subject to fits o' late. It was comin' on you suddint as I did under the tree that brought it on. I wouldn't let Mr. D'Arcy tell you I wur here until I wur quite sure I should have no more on 'em, but the doctor said this very day that I wur now quite well." 'My mind ran all night long upon the mystery of Sinfi Lovell. Mr. D'Arcy's explanation of her appearance at Hurstcote Manor was certainly clear enough, but somehow its very clearness aroused suspicion--no, I will not say suspicion--misgivings. If he had been able, while he seemed so frank and open, to keep away from me a secret--I mean the secret of Sinfi Lovell's being concealed in the house--what secrets might he not be concealing from me about my own mystery? Did he not know everything that occurred during that period which was a blank in my mind, the period from my sinking down on the sands to my waking up in his house? 'From the very first, indeed, a feeling of mystery had haunted me. I had often pondered over every circumstance that attended my waking into life, but that incident which was the most firmly fixed in my mind was the sight of the feet of a tall woman whose body was hid by the screen between my couch and the other one. When I asked Mr. D'Arcy about this, he did not say in so many words that I was suffering from a delusion about those feet, but he talked about the illusion which generally accompanied a recovery from such illnesses as mine. Now of course I felt sure that Sinfi was the person I had seen on the couch. But why was she there? 'I did not see Mr. D'Arcy until the afternoon after the guests had left, for in order to avoid seeing him and them, I took a long stroll by the river and then got into the punt. I had scarcely done so when Sinfi appeared on the bank and hailed me. I took her into the punt. She was so entirely herself that I found it difficult to believe in the startling spectacle of the previous evening, although her expression was careworn, and she certainly looked a little paler than she used to look when she and I and Rhona Boswell were such great friends; her splendid beauty and bearing were as striking as ever, I thought. I was expecting every minute that she would say something about what occurred under the elm tree in the home close. But she did not allude to it, and therefore I did not. We spent the entire afternoon in reminiscences of Carnarvonshire. When she told me that she knew you and that you had been there together, and when she told me the cause of your being there, and told me of your search for me, and all the distress that came to you on my account, my longing to see you was like a fever.