"Quite so, Sir George," Ralph said eagerly. "I--came back for something. I helped you into the house after your illness overcame you. Forgive me if I seem to have stayed a little too long in my anxiety to be of assistance. If you will take my advice you will go back to your room without delay." Sir George muttered something to the effect that he was very tired. He babbled about cool springs in the woods, he accepted Mary's arm as a weary child might do. It seemed almost impossible to believe that this was the sprightly, gallant figure that Ralph had known in Paris so short a time ago. But when Ralph had gone by the way in which he had come, and once more Sir George was in his bedroom, a change came over him. He eagerly drank the soda-water that Mary had procured for him. "No, no," he cried, "tired as I am, I cannot sleep yet. I was half asleep, I was between waking and dreaming, and I was dying of thirst. I came out into the corridor and saw you standing there with Ralph Darnley. There were certain words that seemed to be burned into my brain with letters of fire. You were angry with him, and yet he was going to be a friend to us. That was no common thief in the night, Mary. What was it he found? What was it that was going to rid us of the hateful presence of Horace Mayfield? Don't tell me that I was dreaming, don't say that it was all a cruel delusion on my part. The secret, the secret, girl." The words came like a torrent. Out of his white and haggard face, Dashwood's eyes gleamed like restless stars on a windy night. The clutch on the girl's arm was almost painful in its intensity. Mary wondered why she was trembling so. "Hush," she said. "You must sleep now, or you will be really ill again. Leave it till the morning, when you will be better able to understand. I cannot tell you now; indeed, I know no more than you do yourself. But now you must go to sleep!" CHAPTER VIII. FOUND! Sir George lay back on the bed with weary eyelids closed. His last effort had cost him more than he knew. Mary's will had conquered for the moment, and he felt disposed to obey. All the same the strange thread of logical reason was going on in his mind. The only thing that could save him and preserve the proud traditions of the Dashwoods must be something in the way of papers or documents of some kind. He lay there, allowing Mary to make him comfortable for the night. He lay there long after the girl had departed to her own room and the house was wrapped in close slumber. But the quietness was soothing to Sir George's brain. His mind was growing stronger and more logical; the dazed dream of the scene in the corridor began to shape itself into concrete facts.