She was stopped, however, before she reached it, and found Lady Sarah’s hand within her arm. “Don’t go away, Miss Pembury. Tell me, are you ill? What is it?” The light bright voice was unchanged. But Rhoda, still breathing heavily, though the mist seemed to be clearing away, glanced quickly at her, and perceived that she was still of a deadly pallor. “Let me go,” whispered the girl. “I--I’m not well--I--I feel faint.” “I’ll take you into the garden. Jack, bring out a chair, and find a sunshade.” Rhoda shuddered at the name, and looked round. Jack Rotherfield was pale also, although he tried to carry it off in an unconcerned manner. Rhoda would have escaped, but she was firmly held, and made to sit in the verandah, while her companions stood one on each side of her. Rhoda had noticed, without being sufficiently herself to take in the significance of the fact, that there had been a short colloquy between them. Now Lady Sarah suddenly seized Jack’s right hand, and holding it close under Rhoda’s face, said: “This was what shocked you, wasn’t it? The mark on his poor hand? I’ll tell you all about it.” Rhoda bowed her head. She knew that she was going to hear a trumped-up story, but she had to listen. What the real truth was as to Jack Rotherfield’s connection with the tragedy that took place at the Mill-house ten years before she did not yet know, but that it was not what she was going to hear she was quite sure. “Do you remember--I’m awfully sorry to have to remind you of it, for it’s an unpleasant subject, but I must--Do you remember the night you went away from here all those years ago?” “Yes,” said Rhoda below her breath. “And do you know that, on that very night, the poor butler, Langton, was found lying dead in the drawing-room?” Rhoda bowed her head. “Well, the next day the place was in a dreadful state, everybody excited and half-crazy. We were all following out the track of the burglar who had got in and murdered the poor man. And standing by the drawing-room window, with Sir Robert and me, Jack, opening it quickly, thrust his hand through the glass, and cut it right open. I fainted. Coming so soon after the ghastly discovery we had made, it made me quite ill. Sir Robert carried me to the sofa, and the doctor, who was in the house with the police, bound up Jack’s hand first, and then came up and attended to me, and then mama took me home!” Rhoda bowed her head in silence. Lady Sarah waited for some sort of an apology for her behaviour, but she made none. After rather a long pause, during which Rhoda suddenly looked up and perceived a stealthy interchange of looks of alarm between the other two, she got up and murmured something about going back to Caryl. “Not yet,” said Lady Sarah, “you are not well enough yet to be teased by the boy. Sit still, and I will bring your tea out to you. Jack, fetch Miss Pembury’s cup, and mine too, there’s a good boy. And then go and ask Sir Robert if he will come and have some too.”