Promise not to think of it any more? Ah! if only I could have made that promise and kept it. My sister’s protesting words seemed charged with the subtlest and most bitter of all irony. Already some faint premonition of the burden which I was to bear seemed dawning upon me. I remained silent and kept my eyes closed. Alice thought that I was asleep, but I knew that sleep was very far off. The white, distorted face of that dying man was before me. I saw the silent challenge and the silent duel which had passed between those two, the central figures in that marvellous little drama--one, the challenger, ghastly pale even to the tremulous lips, wild and dishevelled, my father looking down upon him with unquailing mien and proud, still face. One moment more of life, a few beats more of the pulses, and that sentence--and that sentence--what would it have grown to? I felt myself shivering as I lay there. “Did you say that father was away now?” I asked Alice. She nodded. “Yes; he is staying with the Bishop for a few days. I should not be surprised if he came home to-day, though. I have written to him by every post to let him know how you are, and he was most anxious to hear directly you were well enough to talk. I have been disobeying him frightfully.” Again I closed my eyes and feigned sleep. I had heard what Alice had not, the sound of wheels below. Suddenly she laid down her work and started up. It was my father’s voice bidding the cabman “Good night.” “I must go down to him, Kate,” she declared, springing up; “I won’t leave you alone for more than a minute or two.” But when the minute or two had elapsed and there was a knock at my door, it was not Alice who had returned. I answered in a low voice, and my father entered. CHAPTER XI THE GATHERING OF THE CLOUD From my low chair I watched my father cross the room. So far as I could see there was no change in him. He came over to my side and took my hand with an air of anxious kindliness. Then he stooped down, and his lips touched my forehead. “You are better, Kate?” he inquired, quietly. “Quite well,” I answered. He looked at me thoughtfully, and asked a few questions about my illness, touched upon his own visit to the Bishop, and the dignity which had been offered to him. Then after a short pause, during which my heart beat fiercely, he came and sat down by my side. “Kate! You are strong enough to listen to me while I speak just for a moment or two upon a very painful subject.” “Yes,” I whispered. “Go on.” “I gather from what Alice tells me that you have already shown a very wise discretion--in a certain matter. You have already alluded to it, it seems, and she has told you all that is known. Something, of course, must have at once occurred to you--I mean the fact that I have not thought it well to disclose the fact that you and I together met that unfortunate man on the common, and that he asked me the way to the Yellow House.”