and baker being allowed to call, and they remarked that they never once
found the area gate unlocked. And while these two women, prim and
self-contained, went on with the cooking and housework and kept the
doorstep clean, the so-called Miss Adela Mimpriss went on with the
woolwork flowers at the dining-room window, where she could get most
light, and the world outside had no suspicion of anything being wrong in
the staid, old-fashioned house opposite Sir John Drinkwater's. Even the
neighbours on either side heard no sound.

"What does it all mean?" Mr Barclay used to ask himself, and at other
times, "When shall I wake?" for he often persuaded himself that this was
the troubled dream of a bad attack of fever, from which he would awaken
some day quite in his right mind. Meanwhile, growing every hour more
machine-like, he worked on and on always as if in a dream.

STORY TWO, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

CONCLUSION.

I stood watching Sir John, who seemed nearly mad with grief and rage,
and a dozen times over my lips opened to speak, but without a sound
being heard. At last he looked up at me and saw what I wanted to do,
but which respect kept back.

"Well," he said, "what do you propose doing?"

I remained silent for a moment, and then, feeling that even if he was
offended, I was doing right, I said to him what was in my heart.

"Sir John, I never married, and I never had a son. It's all a mystery
to me."

"Man, you are saved from a curse!" he cried fiercely.

"No, dear master, no," I said, as I laid my hand upon his arm. "You
don't believe that. I only wanted to say that if I had had a boy--a
fine, handsome, brave lad like Mr Barclay--"

"Fine!--brave!" he says contemptuously.

"Who had never done a thing wrong, or been disobedient in any way till
he fell into temptation that was too strong for him--"

"Bah! I could have forgiven that. But for him to have turned thief!"

I was silent, for his words seemed to take away my breath.

"Man, man!" he cried, "how could you be such an idiot as to write that
document and leave it where it could be found?"

"I did it for the best, sir," I said humbly.

"Best? The worst," he cried. "No, no; I cannot forgive. Disgrace or
no disgrace, I must have in the police."

"No, no, no!" I cried piteously. "He is your own son, Sir John, your
own son; and it is that wretched woman who has driven him mad."

"Mad? Burdon, mad? No; it is something worse."

"But it is