house that night."

Rich gazed at him in blank astonishment for the moment, and then she
flung her arms about his neck, and with her eyes close to his, she
cried.

"What are you thinking--that it was my father who drugged and robbed
you, or my brother? Oh, Mark?"

She seemed to throw him off as she stepped back, her pale face flushing,
and a look of indignant anger in her eyes.

"What does this mean?" cried Janet; but her words fell unheeded.

"Shame on you! You are silent. How could you think this thing?"

"Heaven help me!" groaned Mark. "And I fought so hard!"

By a sudden revulsion of feeling, Rich turned to him again, and with her
sweet rich voice, fall of the agony of her heart, she caught his hands.

"How could you think it of him, Mark! My poor gentle-hearted father!
Do you not see? Did you not tell us that you were hunted from place to
place by those men?"

"Rich, my darling," groaned Mark, as he strained her to his breast, "do
you not see that you are digging a gulf between us, and that you will
soon be standing on the other side, shrinking from me in abhorrence as
the man who has brought this charge against your father? And God knows
how I have striven to bear all in silence!"

"But, Mark--"

"Rich, it is your doing, not mine!" he cried wildly. "What are the
diamonds to the loss of you?"

"But, Mark," she cried impetuously, "this is madness. You suspect him.
You shall speak now--you shall. You have thought my father did this
thing?"

"You drag it from me," he groaned. "I do."

"Oh, shame!" cried Richmond, shrinking from him; "to suspect the poor
old man, who nearly died in your defence."

"What!" cried Mark.

"Whom we found struck down bleeding, and whom I am neglecting now, when
he is hovering almost between life and death--neglecting that I might
come to him whom I thought the soul of chivalry and faith."

"Stop!" cried Mark, in a harsh voice, as he released Rich, who straggled
from him, and stood with his hands pressed to his eyes. "Janet, I have
been off my head. I seem to think wildly now and then. Do I hear her
aright, or am I still confused? What does she say?"

"I--I don't quite know myself," faltered Janet, bursting into tears.

"And yet I seem to understand," cried Mark excitedly. "Rich dearest,
speak to me again. Your father found--struck down--in my defence?"

"Yes, that is what I said," replied Rich coldly.

"Struck down in my defence. I did not know of