e sat for three hours,
motionless, alone,--waiting,--waiting,--waiting. When it was quite
dark, at about six o'clock, Daniel Thwaite entered the room with his
left arm bound up. "My girl!" he said, with so much joy in his tone
that she could not but rejoice to hear him. "So you have found me
out, and have come to me!"

"Yes, I have come. Tell me what it is. I know that you are hurt."

"I have been hurt certainly. The doctor wanted me to go into a
hospital, but I trust that I may escape that. But I must take care of
myself. I had to come back here in a coach, because the man told me
not to walk."

"How was it, Daniel? Oh, Daniel, you will tell me everything?"

Then she sat beside him as he lay upon the couch, and listened to him
while he told her the whole story. He hid nothing from her, but as he
went on he made her understand that it was his intention to conceal
the whole deed, to say nothing of it, so that the perpetrator
should escape punishment, if it might be possible. She listened in
awe-struck silence as she heard the tale of her mother's guilt. And
he, with wonderful skill, with hearty love for the girl, and in true
mercy to her feelings, palliated the crime of the would-be murderess.
"She was beside herself with grief and emotion," he said, "and has
hardly surprised me by what she has done. Had I thought of it, I
should almost have expected it."

"She may do it again, Daniel."

"I think not. She will be cowed now, and quieter. She did not
interfere when you told her that you were coming to me? It will be
a lesson to her, and so it may be good for us." Then he bade her to
tell her mother that he, as far as he was concerned, would hold his
peace. If she would forget all past injuries, so would he. If she
would hold out her hand to him, he would take it. If she could not
bring herself to this,--could not bring herself as yet,--then let her
go apart. No notice should be taken of what she had done. "But she
must not again stand between us," he said.

"Nothing shall stand between us," said Lady Anna.

Then he told her, laughing as he did so, how hard it had been for
him to keep the story of his wound secret from the doctor, who had
already extracted the ball, and who was to visit him on the morrow.
The practitioner to whom he had gone, knowing nothing of gunshot
wounds, had taken him to a first-class surgeon, and the surgeon had
of course asked as to the cause of the wound. Daniel had said that it
was an a