. Brown. Upon my
word! Fancy coming across such a treasure here!"

He picked his way across the disorderly chamber, and, adjusting his
eyeglass, stood looking at the picture. Helen made a hasty movement
towards the door, and Mr. Brown followed her into the adjoining room.

"If I had known that I was to be honored by a visit from a lady," he
said, "I would have endeavored----"

She turned suddenly round upon him with flaming cheeks.

"Don't," she interrupted, almost beseechingly. "Mr. Brown, you were very
good to me just then. Thank you! I was most abominably rude to go into
that room without your permission."

Her eyes were fixed upon the floor, and her distress was evident. It was
clear that she felt her position acutely.

"Pray say no more about it," he begged earnestly. "It isn't worth a
second thought."

She stopped with her back to one of the great cases filled with books,
and hesitated. Should she confess to him frankly why she had gone
there, and ask his pardon for such a wild thought? She raised her eyes
slowly, and looked at him. Of course it was absurd. She has been out of
her mind, she knew that now; and yet----

She looked at him more closely still. He had not seemed in any way
disturbed when they had found her in that room--only a little surprised
and bewildered. And yet, after all, supposing his composed demeanor had
been only assumed. He was certainly very pale, very pale indeed, and
there was a slight twitching of his hands which was out of character
with his absolute impassiveness. Supposing it should be a forced
composure. He looked like a man capable of exercising a strong control
over his feelings. Supposing it should be so. Was there not, after all,
just a chance that her former suspicions were correct?

The action of the mind is instantaneous. All these thoughts and doubts
merely flashed through it, and they left her very confused and
undecided. Her sense of gratitude towards him for shielding her before
Sir Allan Beaumerville, and the intuitive sympathy of her nature with
the delicacy and tact which he had shown in his manner of doing so, were
on the whole stronger than her shadowy suspicions. And yet these latter
had just sufficient strength to check the impulse of generosity which
prompted her to confess everything to him. She did not tell him why she
had started on the quest which had come to such an ignominious
conclusion. She offered him no explanation whatever.

"It was very good