"But have you any reason for thinking Miss Midharst has conceived a--a tender feeling towards her cousin in so short a time?" "No, no. I don't say Miss Midharst is in love with her cousin, but she told me this morning he interests her, and that is a good beginning. You know she has never met a young man of her own rank closely. Beyond a bow and half-hour's chat once a month when she and I slipped into town, she has met no one but you and her father. She has a craze about Egypt, and this cousin is just home from Egypt--that's another thing in his favour. I don't want any one to marry Maud for her money only, and this is the reason I speak to you. She's too good and beautiful to be married for anything but her own amiable lovely self, and I hope you will prevent any fortune-hunter from snatching her up before the grave is closed over her father." "I--I--I," stammered Mr. Grey, "I do not feel quite well. I fear I am growing dizzy again." The door opened. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Grant. Good-day, Mr. Grey, I may not meet you again to-day. You are not looking very well. Miss Midharst will be delighted to see you. She told me to tell you so. Go to her. You will find her in her own little drawing-room; the Lancaster room I think they call it. I hope your knee is better. By the way, when and how did you hurt it?" "I--I am a little tired." "The leg?" "Yes." "How did you do it?" "Strained it." "Long ago?" "The night my wife was lost." He shuddered and leaned upon the back of the chair. "It is his head that troubles him and not his knee," whispered Mrs. Grant. "Take my arm and come into the air. The air will do you good," said the young man in a voice of grave solicitude and kindness. "Thank you," said Grey, accepting the offer. The two left the room together, the banker upon the baronet's arm. Neither the knee nor the head of Grey was suffering at that moment; but he felt a deadly faintness come over him when Mrs. Grant made the appeal to him to protect Miss Midharst against fortune-hunters. "The blows come too quickly and too heavily; too quickly and too heavily; too quickly and too heavily for me." The open air and soothing landscape calmed Grey. He always felt better out of doors now than between walls. Rooms had furniture, and furniture cast shadows, and no matter what part of a room you sat in you could not command a view of the whole. The atmosphere indoors was heavy, depressing, and often laden with scents a man's wife might use, had used once; and these perfumes, coming suddenly upon the sense of smell, brought memories of long ago and half-awakened expectation of seeing a certain woman of pleasing aspect the love-bearer of one. But with the dying breath of the perfume the loved familiar figure of the olden time faded away, and in its place came a ghastly face with open dead eyes and open dead lips, and temples dark with the blue veins of suffocation.