The doctor reluctantly yielded his consent, and then Madge slipped from the room with a wildly beating heart. Instead, however, of turning along the corridor towards the rooms occupied by Cyril, Wayne and Jack, she swiftly descended the stairs, and reaching the study door flung it wide open. "Come!" said she, addressing Jack--she did not look at Cyril--"your father sent me to your room to call you--to your _room_!" She paused a moment, and then continued, with flashing eyes and a bitter emphasis: "Oh, deceive him still, if you can! If you can keep him from learning to what you have fallen, do so! You need expect no opposition from me--for his sake, but never, never, dare to speak to me again!" "Jack is not to blame in the least," said Cyril, quietly. "I am the culprit; he is as innocent as you are, Miss Westbrook." Madge started and blanched; that coolly-worded confession seemed to stab her like a knife. Then like lightning there flashed across her brain the request she had overheard for a loan of twenty-five pounds. Oh, this was all so horrible--so incomprehensible! Jack had lifted his head as Cyril spoke, but had quickly let it fall again. "Jack followed me, only to watch me," continued Cyril, in the same even tones. "He was caught by the closing of the door when I opened the drawer--you know how it works--that is all as far as he is concerned. I throw myself on your mercy, Miss Westbrook. I offer no useless excuses. If I dared ask a favour of you I would say, keep my secret--at least until I am free of Highbank." Madge paused a moment, overwhelmed; then she turned on him with passionate scorn. "Oh, how you have deceived us! Then all the time you have been here you were only a thief--a common thief, at heart. Oh!"--she waved her hand with a gesture of horror--"you acted well as a pretender, a masquerader, a specious, lying counterfeit of honesty." She turned to her cousin: "Jack! Jack! speak!" "For Heaven's sake, Madge, don't go on so. I--I can't stand it, I tell you," exclaimed Jack, violently. "I--I----" [Illustration: "SHE TURNED ON HIM WITH PASSIONATE SCORN."] "Hush! hush! There is no need to say anything further," broke in Cyril, hastily. "Miss Westbrook will keep silence, I am sure. I only ask for a few hours' grace." Madge swept out of the study without another word. Cyril pushed the reluctant Jack and then followed him. At the doctor's door Madge left them and, her heart broken with passion, sought her room. The old man had been awaiting the arrival of the young men in a fever of impatience. The first excitement consequent on the capture of the burglars having subsided somewhat, he had had time to reflect. It had occurred to him then that the thieves must have effected their entrance by the study door; they could scarcely have done so by the window. In this case they had, he thought, probably entered by means of a skeleton key and had escaped in the same manner.