“No!” she answered carelessly. “No more than I would be of a dog. Come on!” Heriot had stopped. He leaned against a tree, faint with pain. He would cheerfully have given a thousand pounds for a drink. “You’ll have to wait,” he said ruefully. “I mean I will. There’s something wrong with my foot.” With feverish haste the girl picked up a stick that lay on the path and shoved it into his hand. “It’s green, it won’t break. Use it for a walking-stick,” she ordered. “And try to hurry. Don’t you know there’s something following us?” He had not heard a sound. “What sort of thing?” “Something dumb,” she whispered, “that leers and jabbers, and I can’t manage it, for I’m afraid.” Heriot put his hand in his trousers pocket. His pistol was gone. “Walk ahead,” he said, setting his teeth. And as she obeyed he heard behind him a faint rustling that grew no nearer. He limped on in purgatory from the heat and his foot. His head swam as the sweat poured off him. If it had not been for the terror of the girl with him he would have sat down and waited for what was following them rather than have walked another step. Suddenly she cried out, and, reaching back for his hand, fairly dragged him after her. They were out of the scrub, standing at the edge of a great, open meadow, with trees scattered over it. As in a dream he saw a white house, quite near; nearer still a black woman and a white running to them. He was so dizzy that he reeled and nearly pulled the girl backward as she clutched his hand. “Beryl!” cried a voice high and sweet. “Oh, Beryl, where have you been--who’s that?” asked Andria, with a quick note of startled surprise. The whole world swam before Mr. Heriot’s eyes. He tried to steady himself, to speak. “Mrs. Erle,” he began, quite calmly, and fainted dead away on the grass at Andria’s feet. CHAPTER XVII. OLD SINS AWAKENED. Andria’s heart contracted where she sat in the pleasant, green-shaded room. The three colored women had made nothing of carrying the unconscious man into an unused room in the upper story of the servants’ quarters; Salome’s eyes had told Andria he must not be taken into the big house. And there in the spotless bareness of the darkened chamber Andria had sat ever since, like a woman who sees a ghost, waiting for this man who knew her to come to his senses. For he knew her quite well. He had been a friend of Raimond Erle’s, had believed like the rest of London that the woman who was called “the lovely Andria” had been the true cause of his financial ruin. When he found what she was doing here, would he warn Beryl what a wicked woman she was who masqueraded as a governess and guardian? She lifted her bowed head to look at him, and saw he had wakened from the heavy sleep that had come on him after his fainting-fit. “Mrs. Erle,” he said again stupidly. She walked over to him swiftly. “I’m not Mrs. Erle; I never was!” she said, with a kind of passion. “My name is Andria Heathcote, but they call me Holbeach here.”