It was Thornton Carey who darted forward, and kneeling by Mrs. Jenkins's prostrate form, endeavoured, in the helpless manner which all men employ under similar circumstances, to restore animation by raising her head and chafing her hands; for Helen, overcome by the suddenness of the nurse's attack, at first sat motionless in her chair. After a moment all her womanly readiness and sympathy returned to her, and having summoned Annette to her aid, they lifted Mrs. Jenkins on to an adjacent sofa and busied themselves in their work of restoration. Not that the French waiting-maid was of much use as an assistant; she seemed to think that the seizure of Mrs. Jenkins, on whose clear-headedness and promptness of action the whole household had been for the last few days reliant, was the climax to the family misfortune; and she wrung her hands and beat her breast and _Mon Dieu_'d in a manner which, under other circumstances, would have been extremely irritating. But Helen was busily engaged in gently bathing the sufferer's head with eau de Cologne, and paid no attention to the waiting-maid's lamentations; while Thornton Carey, who had a keen sense of delicacy, had retired to the window, where, while apparently gazing with great interest into the street, he was drumming with his fingers on the glass, and endeavouring to-arrive at an elucidation of the scene which had just passed before his eyes. 'For me--for me!' this strange woman had cried out just before she sank upon the floor; her meaning, taken with the context of what had passed before, being that the death of Trenton Warren, which had just been announced, was as a blow, not to Helen, but to her. Who was she, this mysterious woman, who had of late assumed so important a position in the household, from whom, as Helen herself allowed, she had received so much affectionate assistance, and in whom she seemed so thoroughly to confide? She had even been, to a certain extent, admitted into the secret of their hopes and fears and their method of procedure in attempting to detect poor Alston's assassins; Helen had vouched for her fidelity, and, notwithstanding the sympathy of all the household, had declared that in this nurse alone could she place reliance. What had been her antecedents? It was as likely as not that Helen, in her trusting girlish way, had taken the woman without any proper references, simply because her face or manner pleased her, and had suffered herself to be beguiled by an assumed sympathy and a smooth tongue. Who could the woman be, and what could be her motive for introducing herself into that quiet home? That she knew Warren was clear--she herself had made it clear by this recent betrayal of her feelings. What could Trenton be to her that she should fall senseless at the news of his death? In the position which Warren occupied with regard to the murdered man, Helen's friends were more deeply interested in him than in any other person in the world; and now he