"Not a bit, my dear. There's not a soul on earth would know me as I am now. Don't you be afraid! I'll walk back with you to the gate, and, then we'd better say good-bye. If you want anything special, write to me--Reuben Dare, you know--at the address I gave you; but even then, my girl, don't you mention names. It's a dangerous thing to do on paper."

"I'll remember," said Cynthia, with unwonted submissiveness.

They parted at the gate, and Westwood, without looking round, went some paces in the easterly direction which he had chosen to take. But all at once he heard a light footstep behind him, and a small gloved hand was laid upon his arm. It was Cynthia, slightly flushed and panting a little, her eyes unusually bright. She ran after him with a last word to say.

"Father," she said, "you will remember, will you not, that, although I love him, I love you too?"

"Do you, Cynthia?" said the man, rather sadly. "Well, maybe--maybe."

"And that you are to take care of yourself for my sake?"

"Eh? For your sake? Yes, my dear--yes."

"Good-bye, dear father!"

He nodded simply in reply; but, as he pursued his way eastward, his heart grew softer towards his child's lover than it would otherwise have been. How beautiful she had looked with those flushed cheeks and shining eyes! What was he that he should interfere with her happiness? If the man that she loved was good and true why should he not marry her, although he was a kinsman of the Vanes and the brother of a woman whom Westwood held in peculiar abhorrence? For accident had revealed to him many years before the relation between Sydney Vane and Florence Lepel, and she had seemed to him then and ever since to be less of a woman than a fiend. Yet, being somewhat slow in drawing conclusions, he had never associated her or her brother with Mr. Vane's death, until, in the solitude of his cell, he had laboriously "put two and two together" in a way which had not suggested itself either to himself or to his defenders at the time of the trial. He himself, from a strange mixture of delicate feeling and gruff reserve, had not chosen to tell what he knew about Miss Lepel and Sydney Vane; and only when it was too late did it occur to him that his silence had cost him his freedom, and might have cost him his life. He saw it all clearly now. It was quite plain to him that in some way or other Mr. Vane's death had been caused through his unfaithfulness to his wife. Some one had wished to punish him--some friend of hers, some friend of Miss Lepel's. Right enough he deserved to be killed, said Westwood to himself, as he elaborated his theory. If only the slayer, the avenger, had not refused to take the responsibility of his act upon his own shoulders! "If only he hadn't been cur enough;"

Westwood muttered to himself, as he went along the London streets, "to leave me--a poor man, a common man, that only Cynthia loved--to bear the blame!"

CHAPTER XXX.

When Hubert Lepel quitted Beechfield, a sudden calm, almost a stagnation of interest, seemed to fall upon the place. Mrs. Vane was said to be "less strong" than usual; the spring weather tried her; she must be kept quiet, the doctor said, and, if possible, tranquil in mind.

"God bless my soul, isn't she tranquil in mind?" the General had almost shouted, when Mr. Ingledew gave this opinion. "What else can she be? She hasn't a single thing to worry her; or, if she has, she has only to mention it and it will be set right at once."

The village doctor smiled amiably. He was a pale, thin, dark little man, with insight rather in advance of his actual knowledge. He would have been puzzled to say why he had jumped to the conclusion that Mrs. Vane's mind was not quite tranquil; but he was sure that it was not. Possibly, he was influenced by the conviction that it ought not to be tranquil; for, in the course of his visits among the villagers, he had heard some of the ugly rumors about Flossy's past, which were more prevalent than Mrs. Vane herself suspected and than the General ever had it in his power to conceive.

"Well, sir," he said--for Mr. Ingledew was always very deferential to the Squire of the parish--"what I meant was more perhaps that Mrs. Vane requires perfect freedom from all anxiety for the future than that she is suffering from uneasiness of mind at present. Possibly Mrs. Vane is a little anxious from time to time about Master Dick, who is not of a particularly robust constitution, or perhaps about Miss Vane, who does not strike me as looking exactly what I should call 'the thing.'"

"No--does she, Ingledew?" said the General, diverted at once from the consideration of his wife's health to that of his niece. "She's pale and peaky, is she not? Have you seen her to-day?"

"H'm--not professionally," replied Mr. Ingledew, rubbing his chin. "In point of fact, Mrs. Vane intimated to me that Miss Vane refused to see me--to see a doctor at all. I am sorry, for Miss Vane's own sake, as I think that she is not looking well at present--not at all well."

"There she goes!" cried the General. "We'll have her in, and hear what all this is about. Enid, Enid--come here!"

He had seen her in the conservatory, which ran along one side of the house. He and Mr. Ingledew were sitting in the library, and through its half-open glass door he had caught sight of the girl's white gown amongst the flowers. She turned instantly at his call.

"Did you want me, uncle?"

"Yes, dear. You are not looking well, Enid; we are concerned about you,"

said the General, going up to her and taking her by the hand. "Why do you refuse to see a doctor, my dear child?"

"But I have not refused, uncle."

"Oh--er--Mr. Ingledew----"

"I understood from Mrs. Vane," said the doctor, "that you did not wish for medical advice, Miss Vane."

Enid colored a little, and was silent for a moment; then she answered, in her usual gentle way--

"I had some disinclination a few days ago to consult a doctor, and perhaps Mrs. Vane has accidentally laid more stress upon my saying so than I intended. But I am quite willing--now--to consult Mr. Ingledew a little."

She sank into a chair as if she were very tired, and for a moment closed her eyes. Her face was almost colorless, and there were violet tints on her eyelids and her lips. Mr. Ingledew looked at her gravely and knit his brows. He knew well that her explanation of Mrs. Vane's words was quite insufficient. Mrs. Vane had sweetly and solemnly assured him that she had begged "dear Enid" to see a doctor--Mr. Ingledew or another--and that she had firmly refused to do so, saying that she felt quite well.

Enid's words did not tally with Mrs. Vane's report at all. The doctor knew which of the two women he would rather believe.

The General walked away, leaving the patient and the medical man together. At the close of the interview, which did not last more than a few minutes, Enid rose with a weary little smile and left the room. The General came back to Ingledew.

"Well, Ingledew?"--Mr. Ingledew looked grave.

"I should not say that there was anything very serious," he said; "but Miss Vane certainly requires care. She suffers from palpitation of the heart and faintness; her pulse is intermittent; she complains of nausea and dizziness. Without stethoscopic examination I cannot of course be sure whether there is anything organically wrong; but I should conclude--judging as well as I can without the aid of auscultation--that there was some disturbance--functional disturbance--of the heart."

"Heart! Dear, dear--that's very serious, is it not?"

"Oh, not necessarily so! It may be a mere passing derangement produced by indigestion," said the doctor prosaically. "I will come in again to-morrow and sound her. I hope it is nothing more than a temporary indisposition." And so Mr. Ingledew took his leave.

"Mrs. Vane didn't want me to see her!" he said, as he left the house. "I wonder why?"

Meanwhile Enid, passing out into the hall, had been obliged to stand still once or twice by reason of the dizziness that threatened to overcome her. She leaned against the wall until the feeling had gone off, and then dragged herself slowly up the stairs. She had suffered in this way only for the last week or two--since Hubert went away. At first she had thought that the warm spring weather was making her feel weak and ill; but she did not remember that it had ever done so before. She had generally revived with the spring, and been stronger and better in the warmth and sunshine of summer. She could not understand why this spring should make her feel so ill. She went into her own room and lay down flat on the bed. She had the sensation of wishing to sink deeper and deeper down, as if she could not sink too low. Her heart seemed to beat more and more slowly; each breath that she drew was an effort to her. She wondered a little if she was going to die.

Presently she heard somebody enter the room. She was not strong enough to turn her head; but she opened her eyes and saw her maid Parker standing beside her bed and regarding her with alarm.

"Law, miss, you do look bad!" she said.

Enid's white lips moved and tears trembled on her eyelashes; but she did not speak. Parker, seriously alarmed, hastened to procure smelling-salts, brandy, and eau-de-Cologne, and, with a few minutes'

care, these applications produced the desired result. Enid looked a little less death-like; she smiled as she took a dose of brandy and sal-volatile, and moved her fingers towards the woman at her side.

Parker did not at first know what she wanted, but discovered at last that the girl wanted to hold her hand. Contact with something human seemed to help to bring her back from the shadowy borderland where she had been wandering. Parker, astonished and confused, wanted to draw away her hand; but the small cold fingers closed over it resistlessly. Then the woman stood motionless, holding a vinaigrette in her free hand, and looking at the pale face on the pillow, at the pathetic blue eyes which sought her own from time to time as if in want of pity. Something made Parker's heart beat fast and the hot tears came into her hard, dark eyes. She had never felt any particular fondness for Miss Enid before; but somehow that mute appeal, that silent claiming of sympathy and help, made the woman who had spent the last few weeks in dogging her footsteps and spying out her secrets bitterly regret the bondage in which her past life had placed her.

"Do you feel better now, miss?" she asked, in an unusually soft tone, presently.

"Yes, thank you, Parker; but don't go just yet."

Parker stood immovable. Secretly she began to long to get away. She was afraid that she should cry if she stayed there much longer holding Enid's soft little white hand in hers.

"Parker," said Enid presently, "were you in your room last night soon after I went to bed?" The maid slept in the next room to that of her young mistress.

"Yes, miss--at least, I don't know what time it was."

"It was between nine and ten o'clock when I went to bed. Did you see anybody--any one all in white--come into my room after I was in bed? If your door was open, you might have seen any one pass."

"Good gracious, miss, one would think that you was speaking of a ghost!

No, I didn't see anybody pass."

"I thought, perhaps," said Enid rather faintly, "that it might be Mrs.

Vane coming to see how I was, you know. She has a loose white wrapper, and she often throws a white lace shawl over her head when she goes down the passages."

"You must have been dreaming, miss," said Parker. She found it easier to withdraw her hand now that the conversation had taken this turn.