“You must have some rest,” he said. “The strain of going to the Court would be too much for you. You must not run the chance of breaking down when you need most to be strong. You will let me do this for you. I will see Westwood myself, whether he is at the Court or at the bank, and bring him to you.” “I am sure you are right, my dear friend,” she said. “Oh yes, it is far better for you to bring him here. I cannot understand why Cyril has not come down yet. He should be the one to go. But you do not mind the trouble?” “Trouble!” he said, and then laughed. “Trouble!” He had gone some way down the drive when she called him back. She had left the porch of the house, and was standing against the trellis-work over which a rose was climbing. He returned to her at once. “Listen to me, Sir Percival,” she said in a curious voice. “You are not to join with Dick in any compromise in regard to the news. If he believes that the report of Claude's safety is not to be trusted, you are to say so to me: it will not be showing your regard for me if you come back saying something to lessen the blow that Dick's doubt of the accuracy of the news will be to me. You will be treating me best if you tell me word for word what he says.” “You may trust me,” he said quietly. His heart was full of pity for her, for he could without difficulty see that she was in a perilous condition of excitement. “I will trust you--oh, have I not trusted you?” she cried. “I do net want to live in a Fool's Paradise--Heaven only knows if I have not been living there during the past years. Paradise? No, it cannot be called a Paradise, for in no Paradise can there be the agony of waiting that was mine. And now--now--ah, do you think that I shall have an hour of Paradise till you return with the truth?--the truth, mind--that is what I want.” He went away without speaking a word of reply to her. What would be the good of saying anything to a woman in her condition? She had all the sympathy of his heart. As he went along the road to the Court he began to wonder how it was that he had not guessed long ago that the life of this woman was not as the life of other women. It seemed to have occurred to no one in the neighbourhood to tell him what was the life that Miss Mowbray had chosen to live--that life of waiting and waiting through the long years. He supposed that her story had lost its interest for such persons as he had met during the year that he had been in Brackenshire; or they had not fancied that it would ever become of such intense interest to him as it was on this morning of June sunshine and singing birds and fleecy clouds and sweet scents of meadow grass and flower-beds.