She stole up the stairs after the doctor, her heart beating wildly. Before a half-open door on the floor above he paused, and beckoned to her to join him. She was so much taller than he that she easily saw over his shoulder into the room. Hilary was leaning back in an old chintz-covered arm-chair. His coat was half off, and his wounded arm was resting in a sling fastened round his neck. His eyes were closed, and his brows contracted as if in pain. Tears rolled down Stella’s face as she looked at him. The room was lit by a single candle, and where she stood she was in semi-darkness, and undistinguishable. Something seemed to tell her that it might be long, very long, before she looked upon his face again, and that this love which had so suddenly sprung up within her heart was destined to be “tried by pain” indeed. A sob rose in her throat, and turning quickly away, that it might not be overheard by Hilary, she groped her way down to the coffee-room through her tears, and taking pen and paper from a side table, she scribbled the following lines: “Please write to me. I have just seen you, but dared not let you know I was here. Please do not forget me, for I shall not forget you. And pray do not leave off loving me, for I cannot leave off loving you. “Stella Cranstoun.” She folded the note, placed it in an envelope addressed to “Hilary Pritchard, Esq.,” and placed it in Dr. Netherbridge’s hands. “You will give it to him, won’t you?” she asked, and he promised. “Thank you, Dr. Netherbridge, and good-by!” “You are surely not returning to the Chase alone? It must be half an hour’s walk, and it is so late.” “Twenty minutes, as I walk it. And it isn’t half-past six yet. I will send Lord Carthew to his friend. Good-night!” Before he could say another word she had fled from the room, passed swiftly out from the arched entrance to the inner yard on to the road, and disappeared in a bend of the way, leaving Dr. Netherbridge to ponder on the strange chance which had made him acquainted with the girl whom he had first seen as a helpless infant of not more than two days old, more than eighteen years before. CHAPTER IX. THE GYPSY’S PROPHECY. “Let me cross your hand with a bit of silver, my pretty lady! Let me tell your fortune, deary--all about the fair young gentleman you love so true, and the dark one you won’t have, for all his gold and rank.”