give
my orders immediately. Don't hurry away, Mr. Bashwood," he called out,
cheerfully, as he reached the top of the staircase. "I have left the
assistant physician's key on the window-sill yonder, and Mrs. Armadale
can let you out at the staircase door whenever she pleases. Don't sit up
late, Mrs. Armadale! Yours is a nervous system that requires plenty of
sleep. 'Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep.' Grand line! God
bless you--good-night!"

Mr. Bashwood came back from the far end of the corridor--still
pondering, in unutterable expectation, on what was to come with the
night.

"Am I to go now?" he asked.

"No. You are to stay. I said you should know all if you waited till the
morning. Wait here."

He hesitated, and looked about him. "The doctor," he faltered. "I
thought the doctor said--"

"The doctor will interfere with nothing that I do in this house
to-night. I tell you to stay. There are empty rooms on the floor above
this. Take one of them."

Mr. Bashwood felt the trembling fit coming on him again as he looked at
her. "May I ask--?" he began.

"Ask nothing. I want you."

"Will you please to tell me--?"

"I will tell you nothing till the night is over and the morning has
come."

His curiosity conquered his fear. He persisted.

"Is it something dreadful?" he whispered. "Too dreadful to tell me?"

She stamped her foot with a sudden outbreak of impatience. "Go!" she
said, snatching the key of the staircase door from the window-sill.
"You do quite right to distrust me--you do quite right to follow me no
further in the dark. Go before the house is shut up. I can do without
you." She led the way to the stairs, with the key in one hand, and the
candle in the other.

Mr. Bashwood followed her in silence. No one, knowing what he knew of
her earlier life, could have failed to perceive that she was a woman
driven to the last extremity, and standing consciously on the brink of a
Crime. In the first terror of the discovery, he broke free from the hold
she had on him: he thought and acted like a man who had a will of his
own again.

She put the key in the door, and turned to him before she opened it,
with the light of the candle on her face. "Forget me, and forgive me,"
she said. "We meet no more."

She opened the door, and, standing inside it, after he had passed her,
gave him her hand. He had resisted her look, he had resisted her words,
but the magnetic fascination of her touch conquered him at t