p to heaven. By every
sign and gesture that a man can make, he entreated me not to leave him
again. I really could not help smiling. The idea of my staying with _him_,
and leaving my fair friend by herself in the next room!

I turned to the door. When the mad wretch saw me leaving him he burst out
into a screech of despair--so shrill that I feared it might awaken the
sleeping servants.

My presence of mind in emergencies is proverbial among those who know me.
I tore open the cupboard in which he kept his linen--seized a handful of
his handkerchiefs--gagged him with one of them, and secured his hands with
the others. There was now no danger of his alarming the servants. After
tying the last knot, I looked up.

The door between the Englishman's room and mine was open. My fair friend
was standing on the threshold--watching _him_ as he lay helpless on the
bed; watching _me_ as I tied the last knot.

"What are you doing there?" I asked. "Why did you open the door?"

She stepped up to me, and whispered her answer in my ear, with her eyes
all the time upon the man on the bed:

"I heard him scream."

"Well?"

"I thought you had killed him."

I drew back from her in horror. The suspicion of me which her words
implied was sufficiently detestable in itself. But her manner when she
uttered the words was more revolting still. It so powerfully affected me
that I started back from that beautiful creature as I might have recoiled
from a reptile crawling over my flesh.

Before I had recovered myself sufficiently to reply, my nerves were
assailed by another shock. I suddenly heard my mistress's voice calling to
me from the stable yard.

There was no time to think--there was only time to act. The one thing
needed was to keep Mrs. Fairbank from ascending the stairs, and
discovering--not my lady guest only--but the Englishman also, gagged and
bound on his bed. I instantly hurried to the yard. As I ran down the
stairs I heard the stable clock strike the quarter to two in the morning.

My mistress was eager and agitated. The doctor (in attendance on her) was
smiling to himself, like a man amused at his own thoughts.

"Is Francis awake or asleep?" Mrs. Fairbank inquired.

"He has been a little restless, madam. But he is now quiet again. If he is
not disturbed" (I added those words to prevent her from ascending the
stairs), "he will soon fall off into a quiet sleep."

"Has nothing happened since I was here last?"

"Nothing,