He set out, accordingly, after he had dined. It was a damp, windy night, with heavy rain-clouds hurrying from the west. Hardly an hour before him Alison had trod those pavements, her face set to the New Town, trying to hide herself as she went. Herries walked with his head held high, conning over the stringent things that he should say in the coming interview, yet striving also that he should be just and calm. Jean opened to him with a glum face. Well did the honest servant know that things were going wrong. Her sympathies were all with Alison. ’I have business with Miss Graham,’ said Herries. ’Can I see her?’ ’I doot no, sir,’ said Jean. ’The young leddy is from home, and the mistress ill in her bed.’ ’I will come in and wait,’ said Herries; ’but do not you disturb your mistress—it is not necessary.’ He felt a repugnance to seeing his cousin; more lies, he told himself, and impotent anger on his own part, would be the only result. He walked into the parlour. The little room had an ominously neglected and inhospitable air; the fire was nearly out, and the hard, lingering light of the spring evening showed up all the shabbinesses of the little nest, so kindly hid in the cosy winter hours. Herries threw himself into a chair, prepared to wait. Half-an-hour dragged by and no one came. The demon of restlessness got him, and he began to pace the room. He thought he would see Nancy after all, and called Jean. ’Ask my cousin if she can see me,’ he said, and at the same moment Nancy’s voice called to him faintly from her room. He entered it. The invalid lay against a pile of pillows, in her pink wrapper, looking, indeed, merely the ghost of herself. Her cheeks were pallid, her dark eyes ringed, the lines upon her face were visibly deepened. ’Why, Nancy, I find you an invalid!’ said Herries, in astonishment. ’I fear I intrude; but my business is with Miss Graham to-night, and if you can tell me where she is gone, or when she is likely to return, I will not disturb you a moment longer.’ Nancy trembled, for all the terrors of discovery beset her. The courage to answer her cousin coherently was not in her; her quivering lips would hardly form her words. ’Ally is—is gone out,’ she murmured. ’She did not tell me where. A walk with Willy is her custom at this hour, and—’ ’It is past seven o’clock,’ said Herries, impatiently, ’and Willy is in the kitchen with his books.’ He frowned, and his eyes, full of freshly-roused suspicion, searched Nancy’s face. But a man cannot bully a sick woman in her bed.