r that--and I became very ill indeed. With a man like
you, a chill at worst; with me, pneumonia in a day. Then she came to see
me herself, saw the doctor, got in all sorts of things, and was coming
to nurse me through the night herself. God bless her for the thought
alone! I was supposed not to know; they thought I was unconscious
already. But I kept conscious on purpose, I could have lived through
anything for that alone. And she never came!

"My landlady sat up instead. She is another of the kindest women on
earth; she thought far more of me than I was ever worth, and it was she
who screened me through thick and thin during the delirium that
followed, and after that. She did not tell the whole truth at the trial;
may there be no mercy for me hereafter if the law is not merciful to
that staunch soul! She has saved my life--for this! But that night--it
was her second in succession--and she had been with me the whole long
day--that night she fell asleep beside me in the chair. I can hear her
breathing now.

"Dear soul, how it angered me at the time! It made me fret all the more
for--her. Why had she broken faith? I knew that she had not. Something
had kept her; had he? I had hoped he was out of the way; he left her so
much. He was really on the watch, as you may know. At last I got up and
went to the window. And all the windows opposite were in darkness except
theirs."

Langholm sprang to his feet, but sat down again as suddenly.

"Go on!"

"What is it that you thought, Langholm?"

"I believe I know what you did. That's all."

"What? Tell me, please, and then I will tell you."

"All those garden walls--they connect."

"Yes? Yes?"

"You got through your window, climbed upon your wall, and ran along to
the lights. It occurred to you suddenly; it did to me when I went over
the house the other day."

Severino lay looking at the imaginative man.

"And yet you could suspect another after that!"

"Ah, there is some mystery there also. But it is strange, indeed, to
think that I was right in the beginning!"

"I did not know what I was doing," resumed the young Italian, who, like
many a clever foreigner, spoke more precise English than any Englishman;
that, with an accent too delicate for written reproduction, alone would
have betrayed him. "I still have very little recollection of what
happened between my climbing out of our garden and dropping into theirs.
I remember that my feet were rather cold, but that is a