oiselle was alone in the
drawing-room, and he went there at once. He was dully conscious that
something was very wrong, but he had suffered too much within the past
few hours to be analytical, and he did not know what it was that was
wrong. He should have entered that room with a swift and eager step,
with shining eyes, with a high-beating heart. He went into it slowly,
wrapped in a mantle of strange apathy.

Helen Benham came forward to meet him, and took both his hands in hers.
Ste. Marie was amazed to see that she seemed not to have altered at
all--in spite of this enormous lapse of time, in spite of all that had
happened in it. And yet, unaltered, she seemed to him a stranger, a
charming and gracious stranger with an icily beautiful face. He wondered
at her and at himself, and he was a little alarmed because he thought
that he must be ill. That blow upon the head must, after all, have done
something terrible to him.

"Ah, Ste. Marie!" she said, in her well-remembered voice--and again he
wondered that the voice should be so high-pitched and so without color
or feeling. "How glad I am," she said, "that you are safely out of it
all! How you have suffered for us, Ste. Marie! You look white and ill.
Sit down, please! Don't stand!"

She drew him to a comfortable chair, and he sat down in it obediently.
He could not think of anything to say, though he was not, as a rule,
tongue-tied; but the girl did not seem to expect any answer, for she
went on at once with a rather odd air of haste:

"Arthur is here with us, safe and sound. Richard Hartley brought him
back from that dreadful place, and he has talked everything over with my
grandfather, and it's all right. They both understand now, and there'll
be no more trouble. We have had to be careful, very careful, and we have
had to--well, to rearrange the facts a little so as to leave--my
uncle--to leave Captain Stewart's name out of it. It would not do to
shock my grandfather by telling him the truth. Perhaps later; I don't
know. That will have to be thought of. For the present we have left my
uncle out of it, and put the blame entirely upon this other man. I
forget his name."

"The blame cannot rest there," said Ste. Marie, sharply. "It is not
deserved, and I shall not allow it to be left so. Captain Stewart lied
to O'Hara throughout. You cannot leave the blame with an innocent man."

"Still," she said, "such a man!"

Ste. Marie looked at her, frowning, and the girl tur