“Oh, Mr. Everard!” she cried, for she called him “Mr. Everard” still, as she had done when a child. “You are sick. What is the matter? Sit down and let me do something for you. Are you faint, or what is it?” and, talking to him all the time, she made him sit down in the chair she vacated, and brought him some water, which he refused, and then, standing beside him, laid her soft, cool hand upon his forehead, and asked if the pain was there. At the touch of those hands Everard felt that he was losing all his self-command. Except as he had held them a moment in his own when he met her, or said good-by, he had not felt those dainty fingers on his flesh since the weeks of his sickness after his mother’s death, when Rossie had been his nurse, and smoothed his aching brow as she was doing now. Then her hands had a strange power to soothe and quiet him, but now they made him wild. He could not bear it, and, pushing her almost rudely from him, he exclaimed: “Don’t, Rossie! I can’t bear that you should touch me.” There were tears in Rossie’s eyes at being so repulsed, and for an instant her cheeks grew scarlet with resentment, but before she could speak, overcome by an impulse he could not resist, Everard gathered her swiftly in his arms, and, kissing her passionately, said: “Forgive me, Rossie. I did not mean to be rude, but why did you come here this morning to tempt me. I was going to write and tell you what I ought to have told you long ago, and the sight of you makes me such a coward. Rossie, _my darling_; I will call you so once, though it’s wrong, it’s wicked,—remember that. I am not what I seem. I have deceived you all these years since father died, and before, too,—long before. You cannot guess what a wretch I am.” It was a long time since Rossie had thought of _Joe Fleming_, with whom she believed Everard had broken altogether; but she remembered him now, and, at once attributing Everard’s trouble to that source, she said, in her old, child-like way: “It’s Joe Fleming again, Mr. Everard, and I hoped you were done with him forever.” She was very pale, and her eyes had a startled look, for the sudden caress and the words “my darling,” had shaken her nerves, and roused in her a tumult of joy and dread of she scarcely knew what; but she looked steadily at Everard, who answered her bitterly: “Yes, it is Joe Fleming,—always Joe Fleming,—and I am going to tell you about it; but, Rossie, you must promise not to hate me, or I never can tell you. Bee knows and does not hate me. Do you promise, Rossie?” “Yes, I promise, and I’ll help you if I can,” Rossie said, without the slightest suspicion of the nature of the trouble.