" said Griffeth, in a voice which trembled a little,
although the words were firm and emphatic. "I take the name the king has
given me. I am Wendot, whom he believes the traitor and the foe.
Griffeth lies yonder, sick and helpless, a victim to the influence of
the first-born son of Res Vychan. It may be, when the king hears more of
him, he will in his clemency release and pardon him.

"Ah, if I could but be the means of saving my brother -- the brother
dearer to me than life -- from the fate which others have brought upon
him, that I could lay down my life without a wish ungratified! It has
been the only thought of bitterness in my cup that I must leave him
alone -- and a prisoner."

Gertrude's face had flushed a deep red; she put out her hand and clasped
that of Griffeth hard; there was a little sob in her voice as she said:

"Oh, if you will but save him -- if you will but save him!"

Griffeth looked into her sweet face, with its sensitive features and
soft eyes shining through a mist of tears, and he understood something
which had hitherto been a puzzle to him.

There had been days when the intermittent fever from which Wendot
suffered left him entirely for hours together, sometimes for a whole
day; and Griffeth had been sure that on some of these days, in the hours
of his own attendance on the prince, his brother had received visits
from others in the castle: for flowers had appeared to brighten the sick
room, and there had been a wonderful new look of happiness in the
patient's eyes, although he had said nothing to his brother as to what
had befallen him.

And in truth Wendot was half disposed to believe himself the victim of
some sweet hallucination, and was almost afraid to speak of the fancies
that floated from time to time before his eyes, lest he should be told
that his mind was wandering, and that he was the victim of delusion.

Not once alone, but many times, during the hours of his tardy
convalescence, when he had been lying alone, crushed by the sense of
weariness and oppression which illness brings to one so little
accustomed to it, he had been roused by the sound of light footfalls in
his room; he had seen a graceful form flitting about, bringing lightness
and beauty in her wake, and leaving it behind when she left. The vision
of a sweet, small face, and the lustrous dark eyes which had haunted him
at intervals through the long years of his young manhood, appeared again
before him, and sometimes h