"Tell me, Stewart," she repeated, in a softer voice, while the hand that touched his shoulder moved gently to his neck and clasped it. "I know there is something wrong, very wrong. Tell me what it is." He turned and looked full at her. "Do you remember what you said, Harriet, when that letter came from Poynings--what you said about the hydra and its heads?" "I remember," she answered. Her pale cheek grew paler; but she drew nearer to his side, and her fingers clasped his neck more closely and more tenderly. "I remember. Another head has sprung up, and is menacing you." "Yes," he said, half fiercely, half wearily. "This cursed thing is never to be escaped nor forgotten. I believe. I can hardly tell you what has happened, Harry, and even you will hardly see your way out of this." A touch of feeling for her was in his voice. He really did suffer in the anticipation of the shock she would have to sustain. "Tell me--tell me," she repeated, faintly, and with a quick involuntary closing of her eyes, which would have told a close observer of constant suffering and apprehension. "Sit down, Harry." He rose as he spoke, placed her in his chair, and stood before her, holding both her hands in his. "I have found out that the man we knew as Philip Deane was--was Arthur Felton, George Dallas's cousin, the man they are inquiring about, whom they are expecting here." She did not utter a cry, a groan, or any sort of sound. She shrank into the chair she was sitting in, as if she cowered for life in a hiding-place, her outstretched hands turned cold and clammy in her husband's grasp. Into her widely opened blue eyes a look of unspeakable horror came, and the paleness of her cheeks turned to ashen gray. Stewart Routh, still standing before her holding her hands, looked at her as the ghastly change came over her face, telling--what words could never tell--of the anguish she was suffering, and thought for a moment that she was dying before his face. The breath came from her lips in heavy gasps, and her low white brow was damp with cold sluggish drops. "Harriet," said Routh--"Harriet, don't give way like this. It's awful--it's worse than anything I ever thought of, or feared. But don't give way like this." "I am not giving way," she said. Drawing her hands from his hold, she raised them to her head, and held them pressed to her temples while she spoke. "I will not give way. Trust me, as you have done before. This, then, is what I have felt coming nearer and nearer, like a danger in the dark--this--this dreadful truth. It is better known than vague. Tell me how you have discovered it." He began to walk up and down the room, and she still sat cowering in her chair, her hands pressing her temples, her eyes, with their horror-stricken looks, following him.