ut like this."

"Confound you for a silly old woman!" he cried angrily. "Is a man to
live the life of a hermit? If I had been away to a patient till
breakfast-time nobody would have said a word. Poor little Laury! But
how absurd!"

"Absurd, sir!" cried the old lady, who was scarlet with indignation.
"Then I suppose it was absurd for poor Isabel Lee to have gone home
broken-hearted because of your conduct."

"What!" he cried, springing up, with a glimmer of memory coming back.
"Why, surely you two did not canvass my being out one night till the
poor girl was so upset that she--that she--went back--yes, she was
stopping here. Oh, aunt, your foolish, suspicious ways are disgraceful.
What have you done?"

"I done, you wretched boy? It's what have you done? She was with us
for a whole week after you had gone, fighting against me, and insisting
that there was a reason for your being away, or that you had had an
accident."

"Here, aunt, are you going to be ill?" he cried, catching at her wrist;
but she snatched it away.

"Don't touch me, sir!" she cried. "Oh, Fred, Fred! I'd have given the
world not to know that you were so wicked. And just when you were about
to marry her, poor girl, to go away as you did."

"_Go_ away--as I did?" he faltered, gazing at her blankly.

"Yes, I knew something was wrong when I saw that wretched woman's face.
I felt it; but I could not have believed you would be so base. A whole
fortnight too; and to think that this was to have been your
wedding-day!"

He caught her by the shoulders, and she uttered a faint cry and dropped
the candlestick, as he stood swaying to and fro, staring at the doorway,
through which his sister hesitatingly passed, and came slowly toward
him.

"A fortnight!" he stammered--"Isabel gone!"

"Yes, gone--gone for ever," said Laura, sadly. "Oh, Fred, how could
you?"

"Stop! Don't touch me," he cried angrily. "Don't speak to me. Let me
try to think."

He threw his head back and shook it violently in his effort to clear it,
but the confusion and mental darkness began to close in once more, while
the throbbing in his brain grew agonising. It was as if his head were
opening and shutting--letting the light in a little and then blotting it
out; till he felt his senses reeling--the present mingling with the
darkness of the past he strove so vainly to grasp.

"I can't think. Am I going mad?" he groaned, as he staggered to a
chair.

"Mad, indeed," s