"Hold your tongue!" he said fiercely. "I might live--if I went away-- where I could feel--I was safe. I can't face the old man again. It would kill me. There, it's too much to ask you--what's that?" Louise started to the door. Harry dashed to the window, and his manner was so wild and excited that she darted after him to draw him away. "Nothing, dear, it is your fancy. There, listen, there is no one coming." He looked at her doubtingly, and listened as she drew him from the window. "I thought I heard them coming," he said. "Some one must have seen me crawl up here. Coming to take me--to gaol." "No, no, dear. You are ill, and fancy all this. Now come and listen to me. It would be so wild, so cruel if I were to leave my home like this. Harry! be reasonable, dear. Your alarm is magnified because you are ill. Let me--no, no, don't be angry with me--let me speak to my father--take him into our confidence, and he will help you." "No," he said sternly. "Let me make him happy by the knowledge that you are alive." "And come upon him like a curse," said Harry, as there was a tap at the door, which neither heard in the excitement of the moment, for, eager to help him, and trembling lest he should, in the excited state he was, go alone, Louise threw herself upon her knees at her brother's feet. "Be guided by me, dearest," she sobbed, in a low pained voice. "You know how I love you, how I would die if it were necessary to save you from suffering; but don't--pray don't ask me to go away from poor father in such a way as this." As she spoke a burst of hysteric sobbing accompanied her words; and then, as she raised her tear-blinded eyes, she saw that which filled her with horror. Uttering a faint cry, she threw herself before her brother, as if to shield him from arrest. Duncan Leslie was standing in the open doorway, and at her action he took a stride fiercely into the room. Harry's back was half turned toward him, but he caught a glimpse of the figure in the broad mirror of an old dressoir, and with one sweep of his arm dashed the light over upon the floor. The heavy lamp fell with a crash of broken glass, and as Louise stood clinging to her brother, there was a dead silence as well as darkness in the room. Volume 3, Chapter VI. THE PLANT AUNT MARGUERITE GREW. As Duncan Leslie walked up the steep path leading to the old granite house he could not help thinking of the absurdity of his act, and wondering whether Louise Vine and her father would see how much easier it would have been for him to call at Van Heldre's. "Can't help it," he said. "The old man must think what he likes. Laugh at me in his sleeve? Well, let him. I shan't be the first man in love who has been laughed at." "In love, man, in love! How stupid it sounds; and I suppose I am weak." "Human nature!" he said after a pause; and he walked very fast.