"She will stay where she is until she is strong; Jane wishes it; and then we shall see about the future. Something will turn up for her in some place or other, I've little doubt." Jane glanced at her husband and smiled. Robert had given her a promise to help the girl to an honest living. But, as he frankly told his wife, had he known it was a sister of Bird's, he might never have done so. "About yourself, Lucy; that may be the better theme to talk of just now," he resumed. "Will you remain here for good in your old home?" The hot tears rushed to her eyes, the hot flush to her cheeks. She looked deprecatingly at both, as if craving pardon. "I cannot. You know I cannot." "Shall I tell you what Bird is, Lucy? And what he most likely will be?" "To what end, Robert?" she faintly asked. "I know it without." "Then you ought to leave him--for your own sake. Leave him before you are compelled to do so." "Not before, Robert." "But why?" "Oh, Robert, don't you see?" she answered, breaking down. "He is my husband." And nothing else could they get from her. Though she cried and sobbed, and did not deny that her life was a fear and a misery, yet she would go back to him; go back on the morrow; it was her duty. In the moment's anger Robert Ashton said he would wash his hands of her as well as of Bird. But Jane and Lucy knew better. "What can have induced you and Robert to take up this poor Clara in the way you are doing--and mean to do?" she asked when she was alone with Jane at the close of the evening. "I--owe a debt of gratitude; and I thought I could best pay it in this way," was Mrs. Ashton's timid and rather unwilling answer. "A debt of gratitude! To Clara?" "No. To Heaven." VII. CHARLES VAN RHEYN. I shall always say it was a singular thing that I should chance to go back to school that time the day before the quarter opened. Singular, because I heard and saw more of the boy I am going to tell of than I otherwise might have heard and seen. I was present at his arrival; and I was present at his--well, let us say, at his departure. The midsummer holidays were nearly up when Hugh was taken ill. Duffham was uncertain what the illness was going to be: so he pitched upon scarlatina. Upon that, the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley packed me back to school there and then. Not from any fear of my taking it; I had had it, and Tod too (and both of us were well again, I recollect, within a week or so); but if once the disease had really shown itself, Dr. Frost would not have liked us to return lest we might convey it to the school. Tod was in Gloucestershire. He was written to, and told not to return home, but to go straight to school.