'A strong tower!' Lucy moaned. 'Oh, you don't know what you say! I am such a poor little thing--you don't know how weak I am. Oh, why did he choose me?' She sat with dilated eyes and white stricken face, moaning and wringing her hands. He was very sorry for the girl, but he couldn't spare her. He was thinking of that look on Edgell's face when he had said what a woman's love could do for him. 'Why do men choose women?' he said almost harshly; 'perhaps it is fate, who can say? He loved you, or he would not have chosen you. Oh, you don't know what it is to win the love of such a man!' 'No--o!' said Lucy meekly, with her little smile--her tiny white smile--'I'm afraid I don't. I'm such a little thing! I could not have a large soul like--like Pamela. Oh, why didn't he choose Pamela?' 'It is too late to ask that question now; he has chosen you. Are you going to be true, and loyal, and put yourself aside, as some women do, or are you going to fail him at the last moment?' It was a hard question to answer; Lucy could not have answered it if she would. How could she tell--she who had never been tried--to what great occasion she might rise? She might be a heroine yet, though she didn't look like one, sitting there weeping and wringing her hands. 'You will not fail him now; remember his future is in your hands. He will do great things with a woman by his side to encourage him to noble aims, to fire him with noble ambitions. Oh, you do not know what your love will do for him! He will have a great future with you by his side.' Still Lucy moaned and wrung her hands. 'I shall be always afraid,' she said; 'I shall never feel safe. I shall always be thinking day and night of--of what may happen.' 'It will be your own fault if it happens. It is only your love that will keep him; if that should fail, God help him!' 'I am such a poor little thing!' she moaned. While she was sitting weeping there, Pamela came in, and Lucy jumped up and brushed the tears from her eyes, and puckered her little level brows, and tried to look as if she hadn't been crying. She forgot all about the message she had to give Pamela, and when the sister and brother were talking she slipped out of the room. 'What's she crying about?' Pamela asked him as Lucy closed the door behind her. 'Has anything happened to that--that Mr. Edgell? or is the Master worse?' 'The Master is no worse; but Mrs. Rae is ill, very ill,' Eric answered. He was not at all disposed to talk of Wyatt Edgell's love for Lucy to his agnostic sister. 'And Mr. Edgell, has he been having another attack? Has he been attempting suicide again?' 'Hush, Pamela!' Eric Gwatkin exclaimed almost harshly. He could not bear to hear his sister speak of Edgell in that way. 'You don't know what you are saying. That was an accident, and he had been ill. If you only knew Edgell, you would not say such things. He is the best and noblest fellow in the world, and he is the dearest friend I have.'