hne.

What would relieve my doubts? As Hexford drew near me again on our way to
the head of the staircase, I summoned up courage to ask:

"Have you heard anything from the Hill? Has the news of this tragedy been
communicated to Miss Cumberland's family, and if so, how are they bearing
this affliction?"

His lip curled, and for a minute he hesitated; then something in my
aspect or the straight-forward look I gave him, softened him and he
answered frankly, if coldly:

"Word has gone there, of course, but only the servants are affected by
it so far. Miss Cumberland, the younger, is very ill, and the boy--I
don't know his name--has not shown up since last evening. He's very
dissipated, they say, and may be in any one of the joints in the lower
part of the town."

I stopped in dismay, clutching wildly at the railing of the stairs we
were descending. I had hardly heard the latter words, all my mind was on
what he had said first.

"Miss Carmel Cumberland ill?" I stammered, "too ill to be told?"

I was sufficiently master of myself to put it this way.

"Yes," he rejoined, kindly, as he urged me down the very stairs I had
seen her descend in such a state of mind a few hours before. "A servant
who had been out late, heard the fall of some heavy body as she was
passing Miss Cumberland's rooms, and rushing in found Miss Carmel, as she
called her, lying on the floor near the open fire. Her face had struck
the bars of the grate in falling, and she was badly burned. But that was
not all; she was delirious with fever, brought on, they think, by anxiety
about her sister, whose name she was constantly repeating. They had a
doctor for her and the whole house was up before ever the word came of
what had happened here."

I thanked him with a look. I had no opportunity for more. Half a dozen
officers were standing about the front door, and in another moment I was
bustled into the conveyance provided and was being driven away from the
death-haunted spot.

I had heard the last whisper of those pines for many, many days. But not
in my dreams; it ever came back at night, sinister, awesome, haunted with
dead hopes and breathing of an ever doubtful future.

VII

CLIFTON ACCEPTS MY CASE

This hand of mine
Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand,
Not painted with the crimson spots of blood.
Within this bosom never enter'd yet
The dreadful motion of a murd'rous thought.

_King John_.

My first thought (when I could think at