"The plunge into the river after a heated ride." "She changed her things at once, of course?" "No," said the curate. "It seems that out of bravado she insisted on mounting again, and then rode slowly home. She was shivering when she came in." "Why was I not told all this before?" said North sharply. "Look here, Salis, old fellow; she must go to bed directly, and take what I send her. Exercise your authority, or she will have a very serious cold." He hurried away, and did not send the promised medicine, but took it himself, leaving it with emphatic instructions as to its being taken; and the result was that Leo Salis laughed at the supposed necessity, as she termed it, and calmly declined to follow out the doctor's views. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. "I AM NOT ILL." Hartley Salis did not tell the doctor the whole of his trouble, neither did he say a word to Mary upon the subject; but she divined the cause of his auger as she lay helpless there, and sighed as she wished that she could set matters right. For Tom Candlish had ridden home with Leo, and parted at the gate. "I might have known that they would meet," said Salis, as he sat thinking; "but I never imagined that he would have the assumption to come again to the house." But Tom Candlish had helped Leo when she was in great peril of being drowned; and as the curate learned this he felt his impotence, and was coldly courteous, while, on his side, Tom Candlish was defiant, almost to the point of insolence; and his manner to Leo seemed intimate enough to startle Salis, and make him wonder whether they had met since the scene at the river-side. Hartley Salis soon had something to divert his attention from this point, for the next day Leo was not very well. She was tired, she said. It had been a very long run, but delightful all the same; and she allowed now that perhaps it would have been better if she had listened to the doctor's advice. "I shall be quite well to-morrow," she cried. "Why, Hartley, how serious you look!" "Do I?" he said, smiling, for he had been communing with himself as to whether he should ask Leo plainly if she had kept her word. "Do you? Yes!" she cried angrily; and, without apparent cause, she flashed out into quite a fit of passion. "I declare it is miserable now to be at home. It is like living between two spies." "My dear Leo!" began Salis. "I don't care: it is. Mary here watches me as a cat does a mouse. You always follow me about whenever I stir from home; and then you two compare notes, and plot and plan together how to make my life a burden." "Leo, dear," said Mary gently, "you are irritable and unwell, or you would not speak like this." "I would. I am driven to it by my miserable life at home. I am treated like a prisoner." "Leo, my child," began Salis. "Yes, that's it--child! You treat me as if I were a child, and I will not bear it. Anything more cruel it is impossible to conceive."