The night was fine but very dark. Darker than she had ever seen a night before, it seemed to Helen. She was almost in a stupor of despair. She sank down half-unconsciously before the fire and never knew how long she had lain there when she was roused by the clock striking. "One, two, three, four,"--she counted aloud as if bewitched, till when it got to the fatal _thirteen_, her over-strained nerves gave way, and with a scream she ran or stumbled, she knew not how, along the passage to seek for Mrs. Jones. As she passed the front-door she was arrested by the sharp sounds of steps coming quickly up the garden path. The door was pushed open. The only light was what came through the open door of the room she had just left, and she could distinguish nothing but a tall dark figure hurrying towards her. She screamed with terror but stood, unable to move, when to her intense relief a voice from behind the person she saw, exclaimed eagerly: "Helen, dearest Helen, don't be frightened. I am quite safe," and some one rushed past the tall person, now close to her, and kissing her passionately, Helen felt, rather than saw, that it was Edith. "Malcolm! Malcolm! she is fainting!" called Edith, and the tall person pressed forward, caught her up in his arms like a baby, and, unconscious now of everything, Helen was carried back into the sitting-room, laid on the hard little sofa, and there held tenderly by the strong yet gentle arms whose protecting care she, poor foolish child, had fancied she could so well dispense with. It was the first time in her life that Helen Beaumont had ever fainted, and it was not long before she began to recover. "Malcolm! oh, Malcolm!" were her first words on returning consciousness (and it seemed to her afterwards as if some one else had spoken them for her, her good angel perhaps!), "can you ever forgive me?" "My darling," was the whispered answer, "you know you need not ask it." And then Helen felt as if she were just going to die, but was too happy to care, and too languid to ask even how all this had come about. But now a third person came forward saying:-- "Malcolm, let me stay beside her," and, wonderful to tell, the sweet voice and kind face were Mrs. Lindsay's. Helen thought she must be dreaming, but lay still as she was told, and then drank something or other Mrs. Lindsay brought her; so before long she was able to sit up and begin to wonder what was the meaning of it all.