ou must hasten back to your
dormitory, and breathe not, even to your companions, that you have
quitted it this night. They sleep soundly, and will not awake."

"I forgot to watch how time passed, and I thought not it had flown so
rapidly by," said Fleetwood. "I should deeply grieve were I to cause
you greater risk than you have already run for Ada Garden's sake."

"No harm is yet done," replied Nina. "I took care, thanks to my
brother's knowledge of drugs, that all who were likely to interfere
should sleep soundly to-night. I tried it as an experiment, that, on
another occasion, I might be able to assist you in the same way. Now
let us hasten back."

"Stay, lady, for one moment," exclaimed Fleetwood, who had the natural
horror of all right-minded Englishmen to the employment of any but open
and fair means to obtain even the most important object, and an especial
disgust at the thoughts of having drugs used to send his enemies to
sleep; though, whether, in that respect he was over particular, we will
not stop to discuss; at all events, being very certain that if there was
a doubt, he kept on the right side of the question. "Stay," he said;
"you risk too much for our sake. Give us but our liberty. Take care
that we are not locked up again, as to-night, and we will manage every
other arrangement. The means you hint at employing are dangerous; and,
I believe, we have no right to use them. I again repeat my promise,
that I will not use force nor injure any one for whom you have regard,
unless driven to it by the most dire necessity."

"You act, signor, nobly, according to the dictates of your conscience,"
answered Nina. "Perhaps you are right, and I will follow your wishes,
unless absolutely obliged to encounter force and injustice by stratagem
and fraud, the only resource of the weak. It is agreed then. To-morrow
I will manage that you and your companions shall be allowed to range at
will over the island. I need not counsel you to make use of your time.
And now we must delay no longer, or the morning light will be breaking
in the sky before I have returned to my tower."

Saying this she hurried back, followed closely by Fleetwood, towards the
other part of the ruins. She observed the same precautions as before on
approaching the building.

On a sudden she stopped, and drew back close to him, beneath the shade
of the wall. A footfall was heard; and he saw that she trembled in
every limb. Presently a fi