r praises to your father. What he thought of me you know. If I had
a 'bad mind and heart,' he, at least, who knew me best, never
discovered it. He gave me his confidence--more, he gave me his love.

"Lord Chetwynde, when you came home and crushed me with your cruel
words I said nothing, for I was overcome by your cruelty. Then I
thought that the best way for me to do was to show you by my life and
by my acts, rather than by any words, how unjust you had been. How
you treated my advances you well know. Without being guilty of any
discourtesy, you contrived to make me feel that I was abhorrent.
Still I did not despair of clearing my character in your sight. I
asked an interview. I tried to explain, but, as you well remember,
you coolly pushed all my explanations aside as so much hypocritical
pretense. My lord, you were educated by your father in the school of
honor and chivalry. I will not ask you now if your conduct was
chivalrous. I only ask you, was it even just?

"And all this time, my lord, what were my feelings toward you? Let me
tell you, and you yourself can judge. I will confess them, though
nothing less than despair would ever have wrung such a confession out
of me. Let me tell you then, my lord, what my feelings were. Not as
expressed in empty words or in prolix letters, but as manifested by
acts.

"Your valet wrote me that you were ill. I left immediately, filled
with anxiety. Anxiety and fatigue both overpowered me. When I reached
Frankfort I was struck down by fever. It was because I found that you
had left that my fever was so severe. Scarce had I recovered than I
hurried to Baden, finding out your address from the people of the
Frankfort Hotel. You had gone to Munich. I followed you to Munich, so
weak that I had to be carried into my cab at Baden, and out of it at
Munich. At Munich another attack of fever prostrated me. I had missed
you again, and my anxiety was intolerable. A thousand dreary fears
oppressed me. I thought that you were dying--"

Here Hilda's voice faltered, and she stopped for a time, struggling
with her emotion. "I thought that you were dying," she repeated. "In
my fever my situation was rendered infinitely worse by this tear. But
at length I recovered, and went on. I reached Lausanne. I found you
at the last point of life. I had time to give you your medicine and
leave directions with your nurse, and then I fell down senseless by
your side.

"My lord, while _you_ were ill _I_ was w