"Yes, I knew something was wrong when I saw that wretched woman's face. I felt it; but I could not have believed you would be so base. A whole fortnight too; and to think that this was to have been your wedding-day!" He caught her by the shoulders, and she uttered a faint cry and dropped the candlestick, as he stood swaying to and fro, staring at the doorway, through which his sister hesitatingly passed, and came slowly toward him. "A fortnight!" he stammered--"Isabel gone!" "Yes, gone--gone for ever," said Laura, sadly. "Oh, Fred, how could you?" "Stop! Don't touch me," he cried angrily. "Don't speak to me. Let me try to think." He threw his head back and shook it violently in his effort to clear it, but the confusion and mental darkness began to close in once more, while the throbbing in his brain grew agonising. It was as if his head were opening and shutting--letting the light in a little and then blotting it out; till he felt his senses reeling--the present mingling with the darkness of the past he strove so vainly to grasp. "I can't think. Am I going mad?" he groaned, as he staggered to a chair. "Mad, indeed," said his aunt, bitterly. "Come away, Laura, and leave him to his conscience. Better if it had been as you and poor Isabel thought--that he had met with some accident, and was dead." She caught her niece by the arm, but Laura shook herself free and took a step or two towards where, in his utter despair, Chester sat bent down with his head resting in his hands. But he made no movement, and with a bitter sob she turned and followed her aunt from the room. CHAPTER EIGHT. "WHITHER?" It was a good forty-eight hours before Chester could think clearly. His aunt had sternly avoided his room, and he had been dependent upon Laura, who attended him as he lay quite prostrated by the agonising pains in his head. She hardly spoke, but saw to his wants as a sisterly duty, and felt that silent reproach was better than words to one who had proved himself such a profligate. "I can't understand it," she said to herself again and again. "It is so unlike him. If he would only repent, poor Bel might forgive him--in time. No; I cannot speak to him yet." She little thought how her brother blessed her for her silence, as he lay struggling to get behind that black curtain; but all in vain. He was sleeping heavily on the third night, when he suddenly woke up with the mental congestion gone. The pain had passed away, and his brain felt clear and bright once more. He remembered perfectly now. The scene with Marion after his triumphant declaration of all danger being past. Their embrace. The interruption by the coming of the saturnine head of the house, and the struggle, all came back vividly clear, and with photographic minuteness. He recalled, too, how in the encounter when he had forced his adversary back over the edge of the table, he felt that an effort was being made to get at some weapon.