Jane-Anne, white but radiant, lay back exhausted on her pillows. Mr. Wycherly stood up to go. "Promise me," he said, "that you won’t worry, that you will eat and sleep as much as you can, that you will do everything that your good aunt and the doctor bid you, and that you will try to be happy and at home." Jane-Anne sat forward again. "Mr. Wycherly, sir," she said breathlessly, "you won’t forget, you will try and make aunt keep me? Oh, I have cried and cried, and prayed and prayed, and I don’t think God can expect much more of a little girl like me, do you?" "Crying is absolutely forbidden. You must promise me that you won’t cry any more." "I promise," she said meekly, and lay back on her pillows again. "But you, too; you won’t forget?" "I certainly shall not forget. Now I must really go." He had reached the door, when an imperative cry from the bed stopped him. "You haven’t said it." "Said what?" and Mr. Wycherly trembled lest she should force him to swear then and there that she should not go back to the Bainbridge. "What you said yesterday afternoon. Please say it, and then perhaps He will." "God bless you, my child," Mr. Wycherly mumbled, much embarrassed. As he made his way through the housekeeper’s room to his own part of the house he reflected that Mrs. Dew was certainly right when she described her niece as "making a stir." She had assuredly stirred his heart to a quite painful extent. He was moved and perturbed and puzzled as he had not been for many a long day, and through all his pondering there sounded Sterne’s words to the imprisoned starling: "_’God help thee—but I’ll let thee out, cost what it will.’_" *CHAPTER IX* *THE QUEST* "My voice shall with thy future visions blend, And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold, A token and a tone...." _Childe Harold_. Next day Jane-Anne was allowed to sit in the garden under the apple-tree: a queer little hunched-up figure in the tight stuff-dress and a shawl. She also wore the pie-dish, for Mrs. Dew was one of those people who considered it almost disreputable to be out of doors bare-headed.