What should she do? To whom could she go for help and counsel? Mrs Barclay? Impossible! Cora Dean! No, no: she could not tell her! Her father? She shivered at the thought. It would nearly kill him. He believed so in poor, weak, childish May. She could not--she dared not tell him. If she had only gone to him at once and shared her secret with him when May had confessed her marriage, and told her about the little child, how easy all this would have been now! No! Would it? The complication was too dreadful. Claire knelt there with her brain swimming, and the confusion in her mind growing moment by moment worse. She wanted to think clearly--to plan out some way of averting a horrible exposure from their family; and, as she strove, the thought came upon her with crushing force that she was sinking into a miserable schemer-- one who was growing lower in the sight of all she knew. She pressed her hands over her eyes, but she could not shut out Richard Linnell's face, and his stern, grave looks, that seemed to read her through and through, keeping her back from acting some fresh deceit, when something was spurring her on to try and save poor weak May. The horror of Lady Teigne's death: the suspicion of her having made an assignation with Sir Harry Payne; the supposed elopement with Major Rockley--all these clinging to her and lowering her in the sight of the world. There were those, too, who had noted her visits to the fisherman's cottage. It was terrible--one hideous confusion, to which this fresh trouble had come; and she asked herself, in the agony of her spirit, whether it would not be better to wait till the dark, soft night had fallen, and the tide was flowing, lapping, and whispering amongst the piles at the end of the pier. She had but to walk quietly down unseen--to descend those steps, and let the cool, soft wave take her to its breast and bear her away, lulling her to the easy, sweet rest of oblivion. And May? She started to her feet at the thought. And Richard Linnell? He would go on believing ill of her, and she would never stand up before him, listening as he asked her forgiveness for every doubt, never to be her husband, but ready then to look up to her as all that was pure and true. May! She must save May. How, she knew not, but she must go to her. Something must be done. Hurriedly dressing, she went out, and walked swiftly to her brother-in-law's house, where the servant admitted her with no great show of respect, and she was shown into the drawing-room. "I'll tell my mistress you are here," said the footman; and he went out, closing the door behind him rather loudly. The effect was to make a little man jump up from the couch where he had been sleeping, with a loud exclamation. "What is it? Who the--. Oh, it's you, is it? Well, what do you want?" "I came--I called to see May, Frank dear," said Claire, trembling.