'We will bring you back some of the shield and bladder fern,' was Chriss's parting promise. Mildred watched them climbing up the wooded side of the glen, Dr. Heriot and Polly first, hand-in-hand, and Olive following more slowly with Richard and Hugh Marsden; and then she went and sat by her brother, and they had one of their long quiet talks, till he proposed strolling in the direction of the Fox Tower, and left her to enjoy a solitary half-hour. The little fire was burning now. Etta, in her picturesque red petticoat and blue serge dress, was gathering sticks in the thicket; the beck flowed like a silver thread over the smooth gray stones; the sunset clouds streaked the sky with amber and violet; the old cotton-mill stood out gray and silent. Mildred, who felt strangely restless, had strolled to the mill, and was trying to detach a delicate spray of ivy frond that was strongly rooted in the wall, when a footstep behind her made her start, and in another moment a shadow drew from a projecting angle of the mill itself. Mildred rose to her feet with a smothered exclamation half of terror and surprise, and then turned pale with a vague presentiment of trouble. The figure behind her had a velvet coat and fair moustache, but could the white haggard face and bloodshot eyes belong to Roy? 'Rex, my dear Roy, were you hiding from us?' 'Hush, Aunt Milly, I don't want them to see me. I only want you.' CHAPTER XXV ROYAL 'This would plant sore trouble In that breast now clear, And with meaning shadows Mar that sun-bright face. See that no earth-poison To thy soul come near! Watch! for like a serpent Glides that heart-disgrace.' Philip Stanhope Worsley. 'My dear boy, were you hiding from us?' Mildred had recovered from her brief shock of surprise; her heart was heavy with all manner of foreboding as she noted Royal's haggard and careworn looks, but she disguised her anxiety under a pretence of playfulness. 'Have you been masquerading under the title of Leonard-du-Bray, my dear?' she continued, with a little forced laugh, holding his hot hands between her own, for Rex was still Aunt Milly's darling; but he drew them irritably, almost sullenly, away. There was a lowering look on the bright face, an expression of restless misery in the blue eyes, that went to Mildred's heart. 'I am in no mood for jests,' he returned, bitterly; 'do I look as though I were, Aunt Milly? Come a little farther with me behind this wall where no one will spy upon us.' 'They have all gone to the Fox Tower, they will not be back for an hour yet. Look, the glen is quite empty, even Etta has disappeared; come and let me make you some tea; you look worn out--ill, and your hands are burning. Come, my dear, come,' but Roy resisted.