ned Zillah.

But the Earl turned away. She seized his hand again in both hers.
Again he shrank away, and withdrew his hand from her touch. She was
abhorrent to him then!

[Illustration: "He Sat Staring Blankly At Vacancy."]

This was her thought. She stepped back, and at once a wild revulsion
of feeling took place within her also. All the fierce pride of her
hot, impassioned Southern nature rose up in rebellion against this
sudden, this hasty change. Why should he so soon lose faith in her
father? He guilty!--her father!--the noble--the gentle--the
stainless--the true--he! the pure in heart--the one who through all
her life had stood before her as the ideal of manly honor and loyalty
and truth? Never! If it came to a question between Lord Chetwynde and
that idol of her young life, whose memory she adored, then Lord
Chetwynde must go down. Who was he that dared to think evil for one
moment of the noblest of men! Could he himself compare with the
father whom she had lost, in all that is highest in manhood? No. The
charge was foul and false. Lord Chetwynde was false for so doubting
his friend.

All this flashed over Zillah's mind, and at that moment, in her
revulsion of indignant pride, she forgot altogether all those doubts
which, but a short time before, had been agitating her own soul
--doubts, too, which were so strong that they had forced her to bring
on this scene with the Earl. All this was forgotten. Her loyalty to
her father triumphed over doubt, so soon as she saw another sharing
that doubt.

But her thoughts were suddenly checked.

The Earl, who had but lately shrunk away from her, now turned toward
her, and looked at her with a strange, dazed, blank expression of
face, and wild vacant eyes. For a moment he sat turned toward her
thus; and then, giving a deep groan, he fell forward out of his chair
on the floor. With a piercing cry Zillah sprang toward him and tried
to raise him up. Her cry aroused the household. Mrs. Hart was first
among those who rushed to the room to help her. She flung her arms
around the prostrate form, and lifted it upon the sofa. As he lay
there a shudder passed through Zillah's frame at the sight which she
beheld. For the Earl, in falling, had struck his head against the
sharp corner of the table, and his white and venerable hairs were now
all stained with blood, which trickled slowly over his wan pale face.

CHAPTER XIX.

A NEW PERPLEXITY.

At the sight of that