Hetty brought the sedative and helped her to bed, saying as she tucked in the silken coverlet: "Miss Miller called for you this afternoon, and I told her you had gone to keep an engagement with her. She said there must be some mistake; she hadn't seen you. I thought to myself that maybe you changed your mind and went to the old clairvoyant after all." "I didn't have time to go anywhere after I lost Kay and had that long chase after him, so I hurried home," Ethel answered evasively. Then she nestled her head in the pillow and closed her eyes. "Now, Hetty, I don't need you any longer. You can go and tell mamma I was so weary from my long walk that I retired." Hetty dimmed the light and went out, but she thought sagely: "Miss Ethel fibbed when she said she hadn't been anywhere. I'll bet a dime she's been to the old fortune-teller, and she told her something she didn't like and she's gone to bed to cry over it." Ah, Hetty, your young mistress had more to grieve over than you guessed, and the pillow of down might have been full of thorns for all the rest she found that night. For, shut her eyes as she might, there was one vision always before them--a wan little face like a snowdrop, luminous blue eyes, golden hair like an aureole of light; then it would fade and fall away into a cloud of smoke and flame, only to reappear again, until Ethel writhed in anguish and sobbed: "It was not my fault. I could have saved her if she had not fainted. But no one must ever know I was there. They would blame me for her awful death." She sat up in bed staring with gloomy eyes and writhing hands, trying to put from her the horror of her sister's death and to think what life would be like now when there was no pretty, willful Precious any more to envy for her fatal power of winning hearts. "They must learn to love me now, papa, mamma, Earle and--Lord Chester, for his heart will turn back to me when there is no witching Precious to distract his thoughts. They loved her too well and fate has punished them by taking their idol away. It is my turn now," she thought with a bitter triumph. Ah, Ethel, could the straining gaze of those somber eyes have pierced the shadows of the gloomy twilight they would have beheld a sight to blast them with its surprise. Down the ladder came Lord Chester bearing the unconscious form of golden-haired Precious, whom Ethel had forsaken, and who never would have been saved but for the devotion of the faithful mastiff, noble Kay. The shouts that rose from the crowd, as Lord Chester came down with the girl in his arms and the brave mastiff leaped from the window might almost have reached Ethel's ears, they were so loud and ringing. Lord Chester was so blind and dizzy from the heat and smoke that as soon as his burden was drawn from his arms he sank exhausted to the ground.