"You must not cry: it does me harm to see anybody cry," I answered imperiously. "Now tell me about it all." She regained her self-command at once: "Georgy asked me about the cliff, and I told her that grandpa said I was never to go there--never. But she took me by the arm and pulled me: she pulled me hard--she is stronger than I am," said the poor little mite. It was not difficult to guess the remainder of the story from the child's disjointed words: she struggled not to blame her cousin. Georgy, on reaching the brow of the precipice, had amused herself by throwing stones down the ravine, that she might enjoy their rumble and clatter. When this too mild pleasure shortly palled upon her, she tried to induce Beppo, the delicate Italian greyhound, to go down, and finally, vexed with him for not seeking such a form of suicide, she flung him over--half in sport perhaps, for Georgy's pastimes were sometimes rather savage. He regained his footing before he was swallowed up in the abyss, and stood on the little shelf of rock thirty feet below, whining at first in entreaty, then howling in such abject terror that Helen, broken-hearted at such misery, slid fearlessly after him, but found herself unable to retrace her steps. "Did not Georgy try to help you?" I asked. "I don't think she did," answered Helen, fixing her great eyes upon me. "She kept calling to me at first not to be a coward and to come back. Then she ran away, and I did not see her any more until--" "How many times did you call me?" I asked. "I don't know. I seemed to know you would come, but I felt afraid I could not hold on any longer. Just when I was tired out I heard you coming." I had some stirrings of curiosity about my own fate. "Did you send the people after me?" "When I saw you going down," said she, growing pale even to her lips, "I could not move at first. I was not sure what I ought to do. Then I remembered, and ran as fast as I could to papa. I forget what came afterward. I remember that grandpa was holding me in his arms and crying very much, and that papa and Mills and all the men were bringing you across the lawn." "Don't tell me any more," said I quickly: "I can't quite bear it."