"Oh, indeed I do," she answered, "though I fear that even he, great as his intellect is, will never disperse this frightful, terrible darkness." Lady Poole got up and came round to where her daughter was sitting. She put her hand upon the shining coil of hair and said-- "Dear, do you think that you could bear to see him?" "To see William?" Marjorie answered quickly with a curious catch in her voice. "Yes, darling, to see William. Would it give you too much pain?" "But how, why, what for?" "Oh, not to revive any memories of the past, there is nothing further from his thoughts. But this morning he wrote me the very sweetest letter, saying that in this crisis he might be able to give you a little comfort." "Has he discovered anything, then?" Marjorie asked. "I fear not as yet. But he says that at this moment you must feel very much alone. As you know, he is doing all that a mortal man can. Of course, I have told him how broken you are by it all, and he thinks that perhaps you might like to hear what he is doing, might like to confide in him a little. 'If,' he says in his letter, 'she will receive me as a brother, whose only wish is to help her in this terrible trial, can I say how proud and grateful I shall be to come to her and tell her what I can?'" Marjorie gave a great sob. It was too much. In her nervous and weak condition the gentle and kindly message her mother had given her was terribly affecting. "How good he is!" she murmured. "Yes, mother, if only he would come I should like to see him." "Then, my dear," Lady Poole replied, "that is very easily arranged, for he is in the hotel to-night." Marjorie started. Her mother went to a side table on which was a little portable telephone. She held the receiver to her ear, and when the clerk from the down-stairs office replied, asked that Sir William Gouldesbrough should be told at once that Lady Poole would be very glad to see him in Number 207. Marjorie rose and began to pace the room. A growing excitement mastered her, her hands twitched, her eyes were dilated. Perhaps she was at last going to hear something, something definite, something new, about Guy. There was a knock at the door. A waiter opened it, and Sir William Gouldesbrough came into the room. CHAPTER IX GRATITUDE OF MISS MARJORIE POOLE As the man to whom she had been engaged came into the room, Marjorie rose to meet him. She was not embarrassed, the hour and occasion were too serious for that, and she herself was too broken down for any emotions save those that were intensely real and came from an anguished heart. She went up to him, all pale and drooping, and took him by the hand. "Thank you, William," she said in a low voice, and that was all. But in her words Gouldesbrough realized all that she was powerless to say. He heard, with an inward thrill and leap of the pulses, an immense respect for him, which, even in the days of their engagement, he had never heard.