Out of concern for her charge, Mrs. Dallows at once dispatched the watchman for Dr. Beamish, and, when the physician arrived some little while later, she acquainted him with the Colonel’s evasion and the consequent partially stunned condition in which Miss Sylvester appeared to move. The good doctor, who had come to conceive some measure of affection for those two, rooted, perhaps, in a certain pity which their mysterious, but obviously unhappy, relations aroused in him, went at once in deepest distress to seek Miss Sylvester, who had meanwhile returned to her own room above-stairs. He found her affliction the more distressing to observe by virtue of her unnatural composure. “This is terrible, my dear,” he said, as he took her hands. “What can have driven that unhappy man to so ... so unfortunate a course?” “He must be sought. You will order search to be made for him?” she cried. He sighed and sorrowfully shook his head: “There is no need for me to order that. My duty compels me to make his evasion known. Search for him will follow; but, should he be found, it may go very hard with him; there are rigorous penalties.” Thus, unavoidably, Dr. Beamish but added a fresh burden to her already surcharged heart. It reduced her to a state of mind bordering upon distraction. She knew not what to desire. Unless he were sought and found, it followed that she would never see him again, whilst if he were found he would have to reckon with the severity of the law, and she could have no assurance that she would see him even then. Out of his anxiety to help her, Dr. Beamish invited her confidence. He conceived here a case of stupid, headstrong, human pride against which two hearts were likely to be broken, and, because of that affection which they had come to inspire in him, he would have done all in his power to assist them could he but have obtained an indication of the way. But Miss Sylvester, greatly as it would have eased her sorrow to have confided in him, greatly as she desired to do so, found that no confidence was possible without divulging the thing that Holles had done, the hideous act by which she came to find herself in this house. A sudden sense of loyalty to him made it impossible for her to publish his infamy. So, rejecting the chance to ease by confidence the burden that she carried, she continued to move, white-faced and listless, under the load of it during the two remaining days of her detention. Nor did the doctor come to her again until that third morning, when he was once more accompanied by the examiner, who presented her and her nurse-keeper each with a certificate of health that permitted their free departure. Holles, she was then informed, had not yet been found; but she knew not whether to rejoice or sorrow in that fact.