"Oh, I'm so glad! But" (her eyes straying confusedly round the room) "how did I get here? When last I remember any thing I was in the passage." "I carried you here." "And then went and found out about this man?" "Yes." "And then came back here?" "Yes. I hope you don't think me very impertinent," he says, apologetically; "but I could not bear the idea of your lying here, insensible, without any one making an attempt to bring you round." Recollecting what his own method of bringing her round had been, his conscience gives him a compunctious stab. She blushes furiously, and, raising herself into a sitting posture, begins to twist up her hair with both hands. "You are better now," he says, tenderly, but with perfect respect; "I will go." He moves towards the door, but, before he can reach it, it flies open hastily, and Constance, dishevelled, dressing-gowned, flurried out of all likeness to herself, bursts in. "Oh, Miss Craven! I'm so frightened! I heard people talking outside----_St. John!!_" Mrs. Siddons might have been defied to crowd more solemnly tragic emphasis into one word than does Miss Blessington into the innocent dissyllable, "St. John!" "Well!" replies St. John, tartly, vexed past speaking at being discovered in such an utterly false position. "I suppose I may be allowed to ask what brings _you_ here?" she says, drawing herself up to her stately height. "You certainly may," he answers, endeavouring to recover his self-possession; "and I have not the slightest objection to telling you. What brought me here was the endeavour to recover Miss Craven from a faint into which she fell on coming to tell me--as the only person within her reach--that a man was, as she imagined, endeavouring to break into the house." Even to his own ears this tale, as he tells it, sounds wofully improbable. "And you took no steps to prevent him?" cries Constance, quickly; her fears for her personal safety, for the moment, outweighing the claims of outraged virtue. "Pardon me! I did; but having discovered that it was only one of the footmen, who had been accidentally locked out, I came back to tell Miss Craven so, if she were recovered! and, if not, to give her that assistance which anyone human being may render to another without being called to account for it." Having spoken, he folds his arms, and confronts her, calm and stately as herself. "I should hardly have imagined it was _your_ business," she replies, with scarce-concealed incredulity. "May I ask why you could not ring for the servants?" "Because, as you are well aware," he answers, trying to quell his rising anger, "if I were to ring from now till doomsday, not a soul would hear me; all the bells ring downstairs, and the servants' bedrooms are at least a quarter of a mile distant up-stairs." "Why could not you have come to me, then?"