"Tom Candlish has gone from the Hall for a tour they say, to restore his health." "Left the Hall?" "Yes, and I hope it will be many months before he returns." "Yes," said Mary softly; "it will be better. There, now you will go on and see Mr North." "Oh, dear! who would be a slave?" sighed the curate. "Yes, madam, I will go, and when I come back I ought to go and see Mrs Berens, and then I shall be led into acts which will cause Mr Thompson to commence an action against me. Result: ruin, and our quitting Duke's Hampton." "Did you not say to me that your imagination was too active?" said Mary, smiling. "Yes, I did. What then?" "You were quite right," said Mary; "it is." Salis laughed and went on his mission, but in half-an-hour he was back, and Mary looked up at him wonderingly. "Back so soon?" she said; and then with her heart beating frightfully, and a look of agony in her face that came as a revelation to Salis, she stretched out her hands to her brother, her fingers twitching spasmodically, as she uttered a wild cry, which brought him to her feet. "Mary! My dear child! Be calm!" he panted, for he was evidently out of breath. "Speak!" she cried. "Have pity on my helplessness. I am chained here by my affliction, and depend on you alone. Don't torture me--don't keep me in suspense. Horace North?" "Yes; only be calm, dear." "You are temporising," cried the poor girl wildly, as she clung to his hands and began to kiss them passionately. "Hartley--Hartley, for pity's sake, speak!" "If you will only be calm," he cried angrily. "This is hysterical madness. You are hindering me when I come back to you for help and advice." Mary uttered a piteous moan, and set her teeth, as she clung still to her brother's hands. "Tell me the worst," she implored. "I can bear that more easily than this suspense." Salis gazed at his sister more wildly, as he, for the first time, read, in her anguished looks and broken words, the secret which she had kept so well. For the moment he was as one in a nightmare. He strove to speak, but something seemed to keep him dumb, while all the time she kept on moaning appeal after appeal to him to tell her all. "I thought little of it then," he said; "but now the idea seems to have grown stronger and more terrible. Words he used which I did not heed then seem to bear a terrible import now, and I cannot help thinking that something ought to be done." "You saw him just now?" said Mary hastily. "No, but I spoke with Mrs Milt, and she is terribly uneasy. Mary, dear, for your own sake, spare me this." "No," said the suffering woman sternly; "you can tell me nothing so bad as I shall imagine if you are silent. Tell me the very worst. He is dead?" "No, no, no!" cried Salis; "but I fear for him. He is not in a condition to be left, and yet, strive how I may, I cannot get him to listen to reason." "But you have not seen him again?"