She murmured some inaudible words, bent and, with a passionate forlorn gesture, kissed the back of the chair on which he had been seated; and so flung herself down against it, and, twisting her arms about her head, remained quite still. In the meantime Mr. Tuke was ascending the stairs to a little room in the north wing. He moved pre-occupied, with a certain pulse of embarrassment fluttering in his breast; and tapped on the door he sought, when he reached it, half-apologetically. There might have been an answer from within--the mere shadow of a broken murmur. Without more ado he turned the handle and entered. A figure startled up on the truckle-bed and gazed at him with terrified eyes. It was ghastly with the pallor of tortured nerves; and of a sudden it turned, staring over its shoulder, and clutched frantically at the headboard. “Oh, God!” it whispered. “Not again. I can’t bear it!” The implied deadly reproach; the conviction driven home that he, a humane man by nature, had in one gust of passion caused this mortal wreck and disaster, pierced the intruder’s heart with a keen blade of remorse. He stood where he had stopped. “Whimple,” he said gently, “you need fear no more violence. If I meditated you such, I could not be guilty of the inhumanity in your present state.” Something in his tone or his expression reassured the poor terrified creature. Gradually he loosened his hold of the bedhead, and, turning, sat up on his pillow. “What do you want?” he whispered. “I want to know one thing. I want to have a direct answer to a simple question. Are you conspiring against me?” “Before God, no.” There was a moment’s silence. Then said Mr. Tuke: “Representations have been made to me. I own I acted with unconsidered haste. If I have wronged you, I am sorry. Swear to me that your part in the business of that stone was an unwitting one--that you are blameless, and I will believe you and ask your pardon.” Suddenly the eyes of the weak fellow on the bed filled with tears. “Sir! sir!” he cried in a full voice. “Oh! if you will only be good to me!--you will--I can see it--I can----” The other saw him about to fling himself out of bed, and forestalled the act by stepping hastily up to him. Whimple seized his hand in a fervid clasp and looked up in his face. “I swear it!” he said, half-choking. “From first to last, however the villains tempted me, I gave them no answer. I never knew the girl had got the stone, or that you would think to read my baseness in it. I have desired so earnestly to serve you faithfully from your first coming--to win into your favour and your confidence. But I saw you would never let me--that the curse of my inheritance was on me for ever and ever.” “What inheritance, my poor fellow?” The servant had bowed his head; but he looked up eagerly upon hearing the gentle tones.