She had just reached the door, when he called her again.

"I say! Mind whom you trust in this house. There's no harm in Mrs.
Redmain; she only grows stupid directly she don't like a thing. But
that Miss Yolland!--that woman's the devil. I know more about her than
you or any one else. I can't bear her to be about Hesper; but, if I
told her the half I know, she would not believe the half of that. I
shall find a way, though. But I am forgetting! you know her as well as
I do--that is, you would, if you were wicked enough to understand. I
will tell you one of these days what, I am going to do. There! don't
say a word. I want no advice on _such_ things. Go along, and send
Mewks."

With all his suspicion of the man, Mr. Redmain did not suspect _how_
false Mewks was: he did not know that Miss Yolland had bewitched him
for the sake of having an ally in the enemy's camp. All he could
hear--and the dressing-room door was handy--the fellow duly reported to
her. Already, instructed by her fears, she had almost divined what Mr.
Redmain meant to do.

Mary went and sat on the lowest step of the stair just outside the room.

"What are you doing there?" said Lady Margaret, coming from the
corridor.

"Mr. Redmain will not have me go yet, my lady," answered Mary, rising.
"I must wait first till he sends for me."

Lady Margaret swept past her, murmuring, "Most peculiar!" Mary sat down
again.

In about an hour, Mewks came and said his master wanted her.

He was very ill, and could not talk, but he would not let her go. He
made her sit where he could see her, and now and then stretched out his
hand to her. Even in his pain he showed a quieter spirit. "Something
may be working--who can tell!" thought Mary.

It was late in the afternoon when at length he sought further
conversation.

"I have been thinking, Mary," he said, "that if I do wake up in hell
when I die, no matter how much I deserve it, nobody will be the better
for it, and I shall be all the worse."

He spoke with coolness, but it was by a powerful effort: he had waked
from a frightful dream, drenched from head to foot. Coward? No. He had
reason to fear.

"Whereas," rejoined Mary, taking up his clew, "everybody will be the
better if you keep out of it--everybody," she repeated, "--God, and
Jesus Christ, and all their people."

"How do you make that out?" he asked. "God has more to do than look
after such as me."

"You think he has so many worlds to look to--thous