He saw that she had no strength left to do anything for herself. She got up as obediently as ever; but when she reached the door a fit of shivering seized her. She staggered, fell back, and whispered as Bram caught her-- “No. Don’t make me go in there. Let me stay here.” There was an old broken-down horsehair covered sofa against the wall in the big kitchen, and Bram hastened to make it as comfortable as he could by bringing the cushions from the drawing-room. Before he had finished his preparations she complained of feeling giddy; and no longer doubting that she was on the verge of being seriously ill, Bram led her to the sofa, and going quickly to the outer door looked out in hope of finding some one whom he could send for the doctor. He was unsuccessful, however; the rain was coming down more heavily than ever, and there was not a living creature in sight. The farm hands lived in the cottages at the top of the hill, and Bram did not dare to leave Claire by herself now that the torpor in which she had come home was beginning to give place to a feverish restlessness. So he shut the door, and seeing that Claire’s eyes were closed, he began to hope that she had fallen asleep, and crossed the floor with very soft steps to his old place by the fire. A strange vigil this! By the side of the woman who had been so much to him, who, even now that she had lost the lofty place she had once held in his imagination, seemed to have crept in so doing even closer into his heart. So, at least, the chivalrous man felt now that, by an act of mad, inconceivable folly and rashness, Claire had endangered her own liberty, and perhaps even her life. For that Mr. Cornthwaite would press his conviction that the act was murder Bram could not doubt. Hating the very sound of the girl’s name as he had long done, believing that Christian’s attachment for her had been the cause of his estrangement from his wife, of his entire ruin, it was not likely that he, a hard man naturally, would flinch in his pursuit of the woman to whom he imputed so much evil. And Bram hardly blamed him for it. He would not have had him feel the loss of his son one whit less than he did; he knew what pangs those must be which pierced the heart of the bereaved father. Bram himself felt for both of them; for Mr. Cornthwaite and for Claire. Her he excused in the full belief that her sufferings had brought on an attack of frenzy in which she was wholly unaccountable for her actions. How else was it possible to explain the bewildered horror of her look and attitude when called to Christian’s side by the dying man himself? And had not Chris, in his words, in his manner to her, absolved her from all blame? Not one word of reproach had he uttered, even while he lay dying a fearful death as the result of her frenzied attack! Surely there was exoneration of her in this fact? Bram felt that this was the point he must press upon the aggrieved father.