The fatal glove gone, an embarrassing pause ensued. Eliza resumed her walk and the stranger walked beside her. The latter was the first to break the silence. "I trust that after I left you, you found Mr. Dawe safe," he remarked.

This dexterous and delicate change of subject, showing as it did that the stranger comprehended the subtlest emotions of the inner life, moved Eliza to the quick. She thanked him with a look. “Safe enough, thank you," she said. But he had evidently hurt himself among the slippery rocks, for his arm was wounded in several places."

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Indeed," observed Mr. Mowbray, much interested, "I am sorry to hear that. And how is he now?"

Éliza shuddered. Must the word be spoken after all?

“He has been attacked by the—the epidemic which is raging in the neighbourhood. I have just come from him.”

The stranger edged imperceptibly away from his lovely companion.

“Did you find him very bad?" he inquired.

"Very ill indeed, I was told. I did not see him myself, as the sight of me would only have distracted him."

"No wonder. It would distract a dying saint." Eliza acknowledged the compliment with a smile.

"Much less a living sinner like myself," continued the chivalrous tranger, imperceptibly edging nearer to his lovely companion, who had now grown calm enough to remember to open her dainty parasol. "I hope it will not prove serious, and that he may soon be restored to health and you."

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Eliza cast down her eyes. I hope so," she murmured. There was she knew not what of irritation in the tone in which he uttered the last two words, something of calm looking down as from a height upon her and her poor affairs that made her add: "For his mother's sake."

The stranger's eyes kindled, and his mouth twitched with suppressed enjoyment. "Poor old lady!" he said. "She has much to suffer. I remember the state she was in at Ramsgate only because he was away a couple of hours. She must have been a good deal frightened when he returned wounded, and told her what had happened."

"She had no time to be frightened," Eliza replied simply. "Because the moment he entered he astounded her by telling her he was going back to London by the next train, and that he dared not stay a moment longer in the place."

The stranger looked thoughtful.

why?" he asked.

"And he did not tell her

"He told her not a word about anything, but she could see that the accident had frightened him and disgusted him with the place."

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Poor old lady!" repeated the stranger.

"To think of the

torture this mysterious silence must have cost her, palpitating with anxiety as she was. I wonder she did not make him speak."

"She tried," remarked Eliza with a faint smile. "But she had to give it up-he's very obstinate, as she knows by old experience; and if he determines to do anything, or keep a secret, nothing in the world can make him break his resolution.'

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"A very admirable trait!" cried the stranger heartily. "For as a friend of mine is in the habit of saying, ‘A man that can keep a secret is as rare as a detective that can discover one.' Not that, of course, it can be a secret of any real importance. I suppose he was more communicative to you than to her." Eliza looked vexed. Hardly," "she replied. "But, if you ask me, there was no secret to communicate. The plain truth of the matter is that he wanted to go, so, having no reasonable excuse for going, he remained silent. What, I should like to know, could have happened to make him want to go? It's absurd on the face of it."

"On the face of it!" echoed the stranger. "When he went off in pursuit of his hat, he had no intention of returning to London that day. When he came back to Ramsgate, he was mad, you tell me, to catch the next train. Now does he expect you to believe that melodramatic incidents occur in the light of day between Broadstairs and Ramsgate? It's ridiculous. It was a mere whim of his, as you say. Stay!" he continued thoughtfully, can my presence have had anything to do with his resolution?" "Your presence," exclaimed Eliza. "What do you mean, Mr. Mowbray ?"

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He looked down at the

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Mr. Mowbray appeared embarrassed. ground and looked up timidly at Eliza. "Never mind!" he said in evident confusion. "Just an idea that flashed across my mind. Of course it would have been absurd of him to think anything of the kind."

"Anything of what kind?" murmured Eliza, blushing beneath her parasol.

"Still it's natural," soliloquised Mr. Mowbray absently. "When a man, no longer young, has a precious jewel to guard—but no, it could not have been that."

At this point he gazed up thoughtfully and met the down-dropping glances of his fair companion, and, for a moment, they looked into each other's eyes. Then Eliza turned away with a petulant gesture, blushing more deeply than before.

"You are not angry with me, I hope, for answering your question," Mr. Mowbray said tenderly.

"Why should I be angry with you?" murmured Eliza.

They walked on together.

"The Captain was right," reflected the young man, stealing admiring glances at the charming brunette at his side. "He fled, fearing our vengeance should we discover his trickery. And he is a man who can keep a secret! And, to prevent any immediate danger, he is down with the small-pox! And perhaps he may die! Is Providence playing into our hands?"

CHAPTER III.

SALLY WRITES A TELEGRAM.

SALLY'S tears rained down on the white, helpless face of her master. Suddenly, hearing the voice of her mistress, she snatched up a soup ladle that stood in the corner of the room, and ran out on to the landing. Descending a few stairs, she stretched the ladle downwards in the direction of the parlour.

"Asleep agen," a voice exclaimed. "Allus a-spillin' the ice 'cos it don't come out of your pocket--though why water in lumps should be dearer than water in pumps, and as expensive as if ye could get drunk upon it, I never could understand. Ain't I told ye as this cook-shop melts the coldest ice in a minute, not to speak of the sun, and it's a wonder 'ow I've stood it so long. Lift the ladle steady now, or ye'll slop the stairs and pay for the ice out o' yer next 'oliday; though it's only 'cos doctors is fools and their patients idiots that they swallows all the doctors tells 'em and gives 'em; and what good ice on 'is bald 'ead can do a boy who's got the small-pox is a riddle-me-riddle-me-ree."

Mrs. Dawe's medical scepticism was grounded on the assumption that the feverish symptoms of the invalid were those of the first stage of small-pox.

"D'yer think I'm a baby," she said to the doctor when he informed her of the nature of her son's illness, "as is afraid to 'ear the truth? What's the use o' yer tellin' me lies as if ye was paid for it like a lawyer? If ye'd charge me less for brain-fever, I should be glad if 'e 'ad it; but the odds are ye'll send me in a bill as long as yer face 'ud be if I didn't pay it. When the whole of Bethnal Green is laid up with small-pox, d'ye think it likely that just my boy has been and gone and got the brain-fever? We ain't that sort of people. No one in my family ever 'ad anything o' the kind, and we ain't used to 'avin' our 'air cut off as if we was sentenced to 'ard labour; and a 'ard labour enough it is to live nowadays, without 'avin to pay for dyin', besides bein' charged for brain-fever instead o' small-pox, when I'm sure it's nothing o' the kind. And 'ow can you know better than me as knowed 'im when you and 'im was as small as that 'ere big saucepan?" But even when a week had passed without the eruption of a rash, the obstinate old lady would not utterly abandon her thesis, and she still held out for a latent element of small-pox compounded with the brainfever.

As Mrs. Dawe repeated herself as much as she repeated her late husband, the doctor soon got to know the gist of her criticisms by heart, and they fell on his ears with as little effect as the stereotyped phrases of a liturgy. In Sally he found an embryonic nurse, who rapidly developed under his instructions and the intensity of her interest in the issue.

Mrs. Dawe, though she soon got over her dread of infection, considered herself indispensable to the business; and, as she shrank from hiring a professional attendant, Sally was allowed almost to monopolise the ancillary functions.

She sat at Jack's bedside, listening to his ravings with the terror of semi-comprehension. What always darted a superstitious thrill through her whole being was to hear him address an imaginary third person, and expostulate with him on what he had been doing; especially when, identifying himself with that third person, he seemed to be justifying himself and triumphantly demolishing the arguments he had used in his own character. Then the first self would say: "Your logic is unassailable. Mea culpa!"

Sometimes he became more insistent, with alternations of entreaty. At others, he seemed to be haranguing a man whom he contemptuously called Mr. Speaker, and then he would talk for hours in a polysyllabic jargon of which Sally could only understand a word here and there.

Of other scenes which he enacted the girl could make still less; they seemed to refer to passages of his life which lay utterly beyond her ken. The doctor was none the less puzzled by the delirious utterances of his patient, on the few occasions when they took place in his presence. He murmured something about overwork, and, learning that Jack had been very active as a propagandist of Radical doctrines, he warned his mother against allowing him to mingle in political strife; which was, to her, so striking a proof of the doctor's sapience, that she began to think that the proportion of small-pox must be very small indeed. Once, he pried into Jack's books, and after that he wondered no more. For, being an exception to the proverbial induction anent doctors, and retaining a belief in Providence, despite the nastiness of his own medicines, he made the following note on the case: Overheated imagination brought on by drink and irreligious fanaticism.

Nursing was not the only field in which Sally gave signs of latent talent. The rapidity of her progress in reading and writing would have gladdened a Board School teacher as much as it would have depressed some Inspectors of Schools. All Jack had been able to do for her before leaving town was to make her a copy of the letters of the alphabet, and to teach her to call them all by their

names.

Sally had likewise purchased a little halfpenny reading book with pink covers, full of monosyllabic and unmethodical statements about domestic quadrupeds, and when the rest of the household was disporting itself at the seaside, Sally was content if, after a tremendous day's work, when she had shut up the shop late at night, she could exchange some of her hours of sleep for the knowledge of alphabetical formations, or the rudiments of reading. When she could no longer hold the pen, or peruse the puerile sentences, she retired to bed; treading very softly from an irrational fear that Mrs. Dawe would wake up and want to know what she meant by burning the gas till that hour of the night. A beautiful picture she

made, stalking noiselessly upstairs, her hair falling wildly over her shoulders, her dress loosened on account of the oppressive heat, and all of her body that was visible one mass of ink-the result of her midnight studies in the black art. It was a pitiful waste of energy, the poor girl's patient striving to imitate every whirl and convolution, every flourish and blot of her master's copy. But Sally's eyes were unused to accurate perception of form, and so, failing to produce a thorough imitation, she acquired a much better chirography than she would have obtained by achieving what she considered perfection. And therein lies a moral which the transcendentalist is at liberty to discover and patent.

What times Jack lay in a heavy sleep and nothing could be done for him, Sally would take the pen and ink off the mantelpiece and smear herself industriously, making two marks on her person to one on her paper. But she did not mind bedaubing herself so long as she could keep her manuscript fairly clean, a task for which her kitchen education had unfitted her.

It was while she was thus engaged that Jack awoke one day from his long, delirious dream.

Suddenly, with the curious feeling that somebody's eyes were fixed upon her, she looked up and found the patient staring at her with a new light in his eyes.

him.

Uttering a cry of joy she threw down the pen and bent over

He looked up into her face with an expression of piteous inquiry. His lips opened tremulously as if to speak, and closed again with a quiver. Then his eyelids shut, too, and he remained quite still. After a little he fell into a quiet sleep. This calm slumber lasted a long time, but all the while Sally never ceased to watch his face.

Despite her gladness she felt a lump rising in her throat at the thought of the change that had come over it. The lines of melancholy humour round his mouth were more deeply graved, and transformed into lines of pain. The thin, worn, bloodless countenance still retained its nobility of aspect, or rather, its spirituality was intensified, as if the high endeavour of the soul and not the harpy of fever had been struggling with the hues and traits of health.

At last he stirred, and awoke once more. His perplexed eyes wandered about the room, hither and thither, resting for an instant on the bookstand, or the pipe-rack, or the pot of mignonette, but seemed to recognise nothing. All at once they kindled like a flash of lightning.

I'll look at it now," he said gently.

"Thank Gord!" Sally ejaculated. "'E knows me!" He was stretching out his poor, wasted hand.

please, Sally," he said.

"Bring it over,

"Yes, master; yes, master," cried Sally, sobbing and laughing. "But you needn't look at it now."

Needn't look at it now!" he repeated slowly, taking the