So impressed was Gertrude by the youth's strange eagerness that she followed him without a word across the green lawn, through the wide gate, and along the winding road. "Not here!" she said, aghast, as he paused at the white gate of the Glenalvan burying ground. "Yes, even here," he answered, solemnly; and the gate-latch clicked softly beneath his hand. "Follow me, lady. No harm shall happen you." CHAPTER XLIV. When Bertram Chesleigh came to full consciousness again he found himself lying on a couch in Mr. Leith's bedroom. The curtains were drawn at the windows, but the light of the full day glimmered through, and he saw the grave-faced physician sitting beside him, while Richard Leith, from the bed opposite, regarded him with an intent expression. He struggled up feebly and pressed his hand to his brow. "I have had a shock," he said, with an air of strange perplexity, as he looked into their anxious faces. "What was it? What has happened to me?" "You have been near to death's door," replied the physician, gravely, "but you will recover now." "I wish that I had died!" the young man burst out, with such passionate realization of his misery, that the doctor exclaimed, incautiously: "So, then, you _did_ try to commit suicide?" The brilliant, dark eyes looked at him in amazement. "Suicide! suicide!" he repeated, blankly. "Who dares to say that of me?" The doctor regarded him thoughtfully. "My dear sir," he said, quietly, "I happened in here very opportunely last evening and found you suffering all the terrible symptoms of arsenic poisoning. Your friends feared that your grief had unhinged your mind, and that under temporary aberration you had attempted the destruction of your own life." "They were wrong. I could never have been such a coward," Bertram answered, in such a tone of convincing truthfulness that no one could doubt him. "Indeed, doctor, you must have been mistaken. I have taken no drug recently." "I am not mistaken," the physician asserted, confidently. "You had most certainly had arsenic administered to you in a draught of wine." A startled gleam came into Mr. Chesleigh's eyes, his face whitened, a cry of horror came from his lips. "Doctor, are you quite, quite sure?" he exclaimed. "I would swear to the drug," was the instant reply. "Do you admit the wine?" "Yes," came the grave reply; "I drank a glass of wine before coming in here yesterday evening, but I did not dream it was drugged," and an expression of almost incredulous horror swept over the handsome face. "Who gave you the wine?" inquired the doctor and Richard Leith almost simultaneously. But Bertram Chesleigh shook his head. "Do not ask me," he said. "It is terrible, yet I will not betray my would-be destroyer." "It was one of the Glenalvans," asserted Richard Leith, seeing the truth as by a flash of light. "Do not ask me," the young man replied again. "I must not tell you. It is too terrible. I can scarce believe the dread reality myself."