aid his aunt, bitterly. "Come away, Laura, and leave
him to his conscience. Better if it had been as you and poor Isabel
thought--that he had met with some accident, and was dead."

She caught her niece by the arm, but Laura shook herself free and took a
step or two towards where, in his utter despair, Chester sat bent down
with his head resting in his hands. But he made no movement, and with a
bitter sob she turned and followed her aunt from the room.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

"WHITHER?"

It was a good forty-eight hours before Chester could think clearly. His
aunt had sternly avoided his room, and he had been dependent upon Laura,
who attended him as he lay quite prostrated by the agonising pains in
his head. She hardly spoke, but saw to his wants as a sisterly duty,
and felt that silent reproach was better than words to one who had
proved himself such a profligate.

"I can't understand it," she said to herself again and again. "It is so
unlike him. If he would only repent, poor Bel might forgive him--in
time. No; I cannot speak to him yet."

She little thought how her brother blessed her for her silence, as he
lay struggling to get behind that black curtain; but all in vain.

He was sleeping heavily on the third night, when he suddenly woke up
with the mental congestion gone. The pain had passed away, and his
brain felt clear and bright once more.

He remembered perfectly now. The scene with Marion after his triumphant
declaration of all danger being past. Their embrace. The interruption
by the coming of the saturnine head of the house, and the struggle, all
came back vividly clear, and with photographic minuteness. He recalled,
too, how in the encounter when he had forced his adversary back over the
edge of the table, he felt that an effort was being made to get at some
weapon.

Then the great athletic brother came and separated them, remonstrating
on the folly of the encounter at such a time.

"How strange that I can remember it all so clearly now," muttered
Chester. "Yes, he said that it was over a dispute. He would not
acknowledge the real cause, and she did not speak. The scoundrel; he
had been persecuting her with his addresses. I see now; that must have
been the cause of the first trouble. Her brother was defending her from
him."

Then he recalled how the pair went away, and that the old housekeeper
stayed, while Marion sat by the patient's side, avoiding his gaze, and
as if repenting