she knew!" he said, gloomily.

The young man's chagrin and bewilderment were evident. His mother could
only guess at the causes.

"How long have you known her, Harry?"

"Just two months."

Lady Tatham took him again by the shoulders, and looked into his face.

"Why didn't you tell me before? Do you want her?" she asked slowly.

"Yes--but I shall never get her," was the half desperate reply.

"Pooh!" she said, releasing him, after she had kissed him. "We shall
see."

And straightway, with a wave of the hand as it were, she dismissed all
thought of the Honourable Johns and Geralds. Mrs. Penfold and her chatter
sank out of sight and hearing. She was her son's champion--against the
world.

VI

It was the tenth day since the evening when Claude Faversham had been
carried unconscious into Threlfall Tower, and the first one which
anything like clearness of mind had returned to him. Before that there
had been passing gleams and perceptions, soon lost again in the delusions
of fever, or narcotic sleep. A big room--strange faces--pain--a doctor
coming and going--intervals of misery following intervals of
nothingness--helplessness--intolerable oppression--horrible struggles
with food--horrible fear of being touched--gradually, little by little,
these ideas had emerged in consciousness.

Then had followed the first moments of relief--incredibly sweet--but
fugitive, soon swallowed up in returning discomfort; yet lengthening,
deepening, passing by degrees into a new and tremulous sense of security
of a point gained and passed. And at last on this tenth morning--a still
and cloudy morning of early June, he found himself suddenly fully awake,
and as it seemed to him once more in possession of himself. A dull, dumb
anguish lay behind him, already half effaced; and the words of a psalm
familiar at school and college ran idly through his mind: "My soul hath
escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler."

"Where am I?" Not in a hospital. Hospital ceilings are not adorned with
wreaths and festoons in raised stucco, or with medallion groups of winged
children playing with torches, or bows and arrows.

"I have a gem like that one," he thought, sleepily.

"A genius with a torch."

Then for a long time he was only vaguely conscious of more light than
usual in the room--of an open window somewhere--of rustling leaves
outside--and of a chaffinch singing....

Another couple of days passed, and he began to question t