The day wore on; the gloom of sorrow and mourning had settled on the
Hall. Servants spoke with hushed voices and moved with gentle tread.
Lady Helena sat in the darkened room where Lillian lay. Lord Airlie
had shut himself up alone, and Ronald Earle knelt all day by his dead
child. In vain they entreated him to move, to take food or wine, to go
to his own room. He remained by her, trying to glean from that silent
face the secret of her death.

And when night fell again, he sunk exhausted. Feverish slumbers came
to him, filled with a haunted dream of Beatrice sinking in the dark
water and calling upon him for help. Kindly faces watched over him,
kindly hands tended him. The morning sun found him still there.

Lady Helena brought him some tea and besought him to drink it. The
parched, dried lips almost refused their office. It was an hour
afterward that Hewson entered the room, bearing a letter in his hand.
It was brought, he said by Thomas Ginns, who lived at the cottage past
Fair Glenn hills. It had been written by a man who lay dying there,
and who had prayed him to take it at once without delay.

"I ventured to bring it to you, my lord," said the butler; "the man
seemed to think it a matter of life or death."

Lord Earle took the letter from his hands--he tried to open it, but the
trembling fingers seemed powerless. He signed to Hewson to leave the
room, and, placing the letter upon the table, resumed his melancholy
watch. But in some strange way his thoughts wandered to the missive.
What might it not contain, brought to him, too, in the solemn death
chamber? He opened it, and found many sheets of closely covered paper.
On the first was written "The Confession of Hugh Fernely."

The name told him nothing. Suddenly an idea came to him--could this
confession have anything to do with the fate of the beloved child who
lay before him? Kneeling by the dead child's side, he turned over the
leaf and read as follows:

"Lord Earle, I am dying--the hand tracing this will soon be cold.
Before I die I must confess my crime. Even now, perhaps, you are
kneeling by the side of the child lost to you for all time. My lord, I
killed her.

"I met her first nearly three years ago, at Knutsford; she was out
alone, and I saw her. I loved her then as I love her now. By mere
accident I heard her deplore the lonely, isolated life she led, and
that in such terms that I pitied her. She was young, beautiful, full
of life