"Emmie, what induced you to go to that house, and alone?" asked Bruce suddenly, opening his languid eyes, and fixing their gaze on his sister, who occupied the opposite seat. "Had anything occurred to make you suspect treachery in that most false of women?" The question took Emmie by surprise, and she was about to return a frank reply, when there came the remembrance of her oath, like the galling of a hidden chain worn by penitents of old. Even all that had passed had not set the conscience of the maiden free from the burden of that dread oath. "I cannot tell even you, Bruce, why I suspected Jael,--why I went through the wood in the storm,--but the thing which decided me to make my way into the house and search there for my brother was finding one of his slippers close to the garden-gate." A faint smile, the first seen on his lips during that fearful day, passed over the face of Bruce. "Then it was not for nothing," he said, "that I contrived to detach that slipper from my foot as the villains bore me past the hedge to the gate. It was so dark that they did not notice the trace I was leaving behind me. But wherefore can you not tell me, Emmie, the cause of that suspicion of Jael which led one so timid as yourself to her dwelling in the midst of a storm so terrible, that when the bolt struck the house I thought to have been buried under its ruins?" "Oh! Bruce, do not ask me!" murmured Emmie, shrinking from the searching gaze of her brother's eyes. "I understand," said Bruce to himself, after a pause in which he had recalled Emmie's mysterious disappearance on the night of the eclipse, and her subsequent agony of terror. "You are bound by some promise," he continued, again addressing his sister; "there had been one moment of weakness, but how nobly redeemed! Emmie, my preserver, fear no questions from me; it is enough to know that you dared danger and death for my sake!" The look of deep grateful affection which accompanied the words repaid Emmie for all that she had suffered. This brief conversation alone broke the silence of the Trevors ere their arrival in London. The tedious journey at length was over, the train had reached the last station. Emmie had never before travelled without being relieved of all the petty trouble which a long journey involves; now, on a night in winter, she had charge of an invalid, and had the care of all arrangements needed for his comfort. When, trembling with cold, the travellers stepped out at last on the platform, it was Emmie's part to see about luggage and cab, and then to procure at the refreshment-room wine for her almost fainting companion. Such matters, indeed, seem to be trifles; but they formed part of the discipline which was raising a self-indulgent girl, accustomed to be the object of constant attention and care, into the thoughtful and self-forgetting Christian woman.