He turned to Mary, who was gazing at him with a look so full of pain that it would have betrayed her secret at another time. But just then the love madness was strong, and its effect sufficient to blind North, who, in his joy, raised Mary's hand and kissed it, as he had kissed her sister's. Mary shrank at the contact of his lips with her soft, white hand; and a look of despair that she could not control shot from her lustrous eyes. North did not see it, but Hartley Salis made a mental note thereof as the doctor exclaimed, laughing: "There, good folks, let me go. Don't laugh at me and be too hard when I am gone." "Hard!" said the curate sadly. "Well, I know I'm behaving like a lunatic. I'm going away to study hard, and work myself back into a state of sanity--if I can." He nodded and left the house; and, as the door closed, Mary closed her eyes as the sank back helplessly in her place. "Asleep, dear?" said Hartley tenderly, a few minutes later, and he had risen from where he sat, with a dejected look upon his face. "No, Hartley; only thinking," she said, smiling sweetly in his face. "Thinking?" "Of Leo." "And so was I," he said sadly. But Leo Salis was not thinking of brother or sister. She was writing rapidly, with a blotting-book held half open, and the book she had been reading held in the same hand, so that she could close the blotter instantly and seem to be reading if any one came. Leo's lips formed the words she wrote:-- "It is ridiculous of you to have such jealous thoughts. He has tended me patiently as any other doctor would. I will tell you more to-morrow night, but to-day I tell you this: I think him very clever as a doctor; as an ordinary being I think him an idiot. At the old time as nearly as I can. Do be punctual this time, pray." It was about five o'clock the next morning that, after sitting up reading hard, and trying to recover lost time, till half-past three, North was plunged in a deep sleep, in which he dreamed that Leo was smiling in his eyes, and repeating the words she had uttered in her delirium, when there was a heavy dragging at the night-bell. "What is it?" cried the doctor from his window. "My young master, sir," cried the voice of the butler from the Hall. "Taken ill?" "Ill, sir? Oh, Heaven help us! it's worse than that!" CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. TOM CANDLISH PLAYS BADLY. Squire Luke Candlish looked flushed and angry, as he stood facing his brother in the billiard-room, over the dining-room, at the Hall. Dinner had been ended an hour, and in company with his brother he had partaken of enough wine for three ordinary men, after which they had gone upstairs to smoke and play two or three games. Tom Candlish played horribly that night. The strokes he made were vile; and so transparent were some of his blunders that any one but Squire Luke would have seen and asked what it meant.