"Master," put in Ann Hopley, "where's the good of your taking up a gloomy view of it, all at once? _That's_ not the way to get well." "Gloomy! not a bit of it," cried Sir Adam, in a voice as cheery as a lark's on a summer's morning. "Heaven is more to be desired than Portland Prison, Ann." So Karl went forth, carrying his commission. In his heart he still trembled at it. The interests involved were so immense; the stake was so heavy for his unfortunate brother. In his extreme caution, he did not care to be seen going to the surgeon's house, but sent a note to ask him to call at the Court. It was the dusk of evening when Mr. Moore arrived. He was shown in to Sir Karl in his own room. Giles was appearing with two wax-lights in massive silver candlesticks, but his master motioned them away. "I can say what I have to say better by this light than in a glare," he observed to the doctor: perhaps as an opening preliminary, or intimation that the subject of the interview was not a pleasant one. And Giles shut them in alone. Karl sat sideways to the table, his elbow leaning on it; the doctor facing him with his back to the window. "Mr. Moore," began Karl, after a pause of embarrassment, "did it ever occur to you to have a secret confided to your keeping involving life or death?" Mr. Moore paused in his turn. The question no doubt caused him surprise. He took it--the "life or death"--to be put in a professional point of view. A suspicion came over him that he was about to be consulted for some malady connected with the (evident) fading away of Lady Andinnian. "I do not suppose, Sir Karl, there is a single disease that flesh is heir to, whether secret or open, but what I have been consulted upon in my time." "Not disease," returned Karl hastily; finding he was misunderstood. "I meant a real, actual secret. A dangerous secret, involving life or death to the individual concerned, according as others should hold it sacred or betray it." A longer pause yet. Mr. Moore staring at Karl through the room's twilight. "You must speak more plainly, Sir Karl, if you wish me to understand." And Karl continued thoughtfully, weighing every word as he spoke it, that it might not harm his brother. "The case is this, Mr. Moore. I hold in my keeping a dangerous secret. It concerns a--a friend: a gentleman who has managed to put himself in peril of the law. For the present he is evading the law; keeping himself, in fact, concealed alike from enemies and friends, with the exception of one or two who are--I may say--helping to screen him. If there were a necessity for my wishing to confide this secret to you, would you undertake to keep it sacred? Or should you consider it lay in your duty as a conscientious man to betray it?" "Goodness bless me, no!" cried the doctor. "I'm not going to betray people: it's not in my line. My business is to heal their sickness. You need not fear me. It is a case of debt, I suppose, Sir Karl?"