"Yes, father."

"It seems to me that you need watching over as much as ever you did when you was a little baby-girl. I don't see why you should be abandoned in your need any more than you're willing to abandon me. If I can be any sort of help to you, I won't try to leave London at all. I can hide away somewhere no doubt as other folks have done. There are places at the East-end where no one would notice me. Shall I stay, Cynthia?"

"Dear father! No, you will be no help to me--no comfort--if you are in danger!"

He put his arm round her and pressed her close to him; but he did not speak again until they reached the station. The streets were noisy, and conversation was well-nigh impossible. When they got out, Cynthia paid the cabman and dismissed him. Her father walked forward, glancing round him suspiciously as he went. It was a quarter to eleven o'clock. Cynthia joined him in a dark corner of the great entrance-hall.

"I will take your ticket," she said, "where will you go?"

Westwood hesitated for a moment.

"It's not safe, Cynthia. I will not go at all. I should only be arrested at the other end; I am sure of it. I'll tell you what we will do. You may go and take a ticket for Liverpool and bring it to me--in full view of that policeman there, who is eyeing us so suspiciously. Then you must say 'good-bye' and walk straight out of the station. I will mingle with the crowd on the platform; but I will not go by train--I'll slip eastward and lose myself in Whitechapel. I've made up my mind--I don't start for Liverpool to-day."

"Perhaps you are right," said Cynthia, in a faltering voice. "But how shall I know where you are?"

"Better for you not to know, my dear. I shall put them off the scent in this way, and you will have no idea of what has become of me. Now get my ticket and say good-bye--as affectionate and as public as you like. It will all tell in the long run; that bobby has his eye on us."

Cynthia did as she was desired. Her father kissed her pale, agitated face several times, and made his adieux rather unnecessarily conspicuous. Then Cynthia left the station, and her father made his way to the platform, where he mingled with the crowd, and finally got away by another door, and turned his face towards the illimitable east of London.

Cynthia did not take a cab again. It was a relief to her to walk, and she was in a neighborhood that she knew very well. She turned into Euston Square, then down Woburn Place, and through Tavistock Square to Russell Square. She could not stay away from Hubert any longer.

She knew the house--it was the place to which she had come one autumn day when Mr. Lepel wanted to hear her sing. She had never been there since. The square looked strangely different to her; the trees in the garden, in spite of their green livery, gave no beauty to the scene. It was as cheerless and as dark as it had been on the cold autumnal morning when she had gone to learn her fate from the critic's lips; and yet the sun was shining now, and the sky overhead was blue. But Cynthia's heart was sadder than it had been in the days of her friendlessness and poverty.

She rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Jenkins, who appeared almost at once and led the girl into Hubert's deserted sitting-room.

"Oh, miss, I'm so glad you have come!" she said. "For we can't get Mr.

Lepel to be quiet at all, and we were just on the point of sending off for you, because he calls for you constant, and the doctor, he says, 'could you get the lady that he talks about to come and sit beside him for a little time? That might calm him,' he says; 'and if we calm him, we may save his life.'"

"Oh, is he so ill as that?" cried Cynthia.

"He couldn't be much worse, miss, the doctor says. Can you stay, miss, now you're here? Just for an hour or two at any rate!"

"I can stay as long as I can be of any use," said the girl desperately.

"Nobody wants me--nobody will ask for me; it is better for me to be here."

The words fell unheeded on Mrs. Jenkins' ears. All that she cared about was the welfare of her husband's employer. Both Jenkins and his wife adored Mr. Lepel, and the thought that he might die in his illness had been agony to them--and not on their own account alone. They genuinely believed in Miss West's power of soothing and calming him, and Mrs.

Jenkins could not do enough for the girl's comfort.

"You'll take off your things here, miss, will you not? And then I'll take you to Mr. Lepel's own room. But wouldn't you like a glass of wine or a cup of tea or something before you go in? You look terrible tired and harassed like, miss; and what you are going to see isn't exactly what will do you good. Poor Mr. Lepel he do look dreadful--and that's the long and the short of it!"

"I don't want anything, thank you, Mrs. Jenkins," said Cynthia, faintly smiling; "and I should like to go to Mr. Lepel at once."

"Have you ever seen anything of sick people, miss, or done any nursing?"

"Never, Mrs. Jenkins."

"Don't be too frightened then, miss, when you first see Mr. Lepel.

People with fevers often look worse than they really are."

Cynthia set her lips; if she was frightened, she would not show it, she resolved.

Then, after some slight delay, she was admitted to Hubert's room; and there, in spite of her resolution, at first she stood aghast.

It startled her to perceive that, although she knew his face so well, she might not have recognised it in an unaccustomed place. It was discolored, and the eyes were bloodshot and wandering; the hair had been partially cut away from his head, and the stubble of an unshaven beard showed itself on cheeks and chin. Any romance that might have existed in the mind of a girl of twenty concerning her lover's illness was struck dead at once and forever. He was ill--terribly ill and delirious; he looked at her with a madman's eyes, and his face was utterly changed; his voice too, as he raised it in the constant stream of incoherent talk that escaped his lips, was hoarse and rasping and unnatural. Anything less interesting, less attractive to a weak soul than this delirious fever-stricken man could not well be imagined; but Cynthia's soul was anything but weak.

She was conscious that never in her life had she loved Hubert Lepel so intensely, so devotedly as she loved him now. Something of the maternal instinct awakened within her at the sight of his great need. He had no one to minister to his more subtle wants--no one to tend him out of pure love and sympathy. The man Jenkins, who sat beside the bed, ready to hold him down if in his delirium he should attempt to throw himself out of the window, was awkward and uncouth in a sick-room. Mrs. Jenkins, although ready and willing to help, was longing to steal away to her little children at home. The landlady down-stairs had announced that she could not possibly undertake to wait upon an invalid. All these facts became clear to Cynthia in a very little time. She saw, as soon as she entered the room, that the window-blind was awry and the curtains were wrongly hung, that the table and the chest of drawers were crowded with an untidy array of bottles, cups and glasses, and that the whole aspect of the place was desolate. This fact did not concern her at present however; her attention was given wholly and at once to the sick man.

She stood for a minute or two at the foot of the bed, realising with a pang the fact that he did not know her. His eyes rested upon her as he spoke; but there was no recognition in them. She could not hear all he said; but, between strings of incoherent words and unintelligible phrases, some sentences caught her ear.

"She will not come," said the sick man--"she has given me up entirely!

Quite right too! The world would say that she was perfectly right. And I am in the wrong--always--I have always been wrong; and there is no way out of it. Some one said that to me once--no way out of it--no way out of it--no way out of it--oh, Heaven!"

The sentence ended with a moan of agony which made Cynthia writhe with pain.

"He's always saying that," Jenkins whispered to her--"'No way out of it!' He keeps coming back to that as if--as if there was something on his mind."

Cynthia raised her hand to silence him. The torrent of words broke out again.

"It was not all my fault. It was Flossy's fault; but one cannot betray a woman, one's sister--can one? Even she would say that. But she has gone away, and she will never come back again. Cynthia--Cynthia! I might call as long as I pleased--she would never come. Why don't you fetch her, some of you? So many people here, and nobody will bring Cynthia to me!

Cynthia, Cynthia, my love!"

"I am here, dear--I am here, beside you," said Cynthia.

But he did not seem to understand. She touched his hot hand with her own, and smoothed his fevered brow. The restless tongue went on.

"She has given me up, and I shall never see her any more! She gave me too hard a task; I could not do it--not all at once. It is done now.

Yes, I have done it, and it has divided us for ever. Why did you make me speak, Cynthia? He was not miserable--he was happy. But I am to be miserable for ever and ever now. There is no way out of the misery--no way out of it--darkness and loneliness all my life, and worse afterwards. Cynthia, Cynthia, you are sending me to perdition!"

He half rose from his bed, and made as if he would struggle with her.

Jenkins came to the rescue; but Cynthia would not move aside.

"Lie down, dearest," she was saying--"lie down and rest. Cynthia is here--Cynthia is with you; she will never leave you any more unless you send her away. Lie down, my darling, and try to rest."

He did not understand the words; but the sweet rhythm of her voice caught his ear. He fell back upon the pillows, staring, helpless, subdued. She kept her cool hand upon his brow.

"Is that Cynthia?" he said suddenly.

"Yes, dearest, it is Cynthia."

"How kind of her to come!" said Hubert, looking away from the girl as if Cynthia were on the other side of the room. "But she should not look so angrily at me. I have done what I could, you know. It is all right now, Cynthia, I have done what I could--I have saved him--indeed I have!

I'll take the punishment--no way out of it but that! A life sentence--a life sentence for me!"

The words died away upon his lips in a confused babble that they could not understand. He murmured inarticulately for a time, but there came long pauses between the words, his eyelids drooped a little, and he grew perceptibly less flushed. In about half an hour the doctor came into the room. He cast a swift look at Cynthia, and another at his patient; then he nodded sagaciously.

"Better," he said curtly. "I thought so. Some more ice, Jenkins. He has been quieter since you came, I conclude, madam?"

Cynthia bowed her head.

"You are the lady for whom he has been asking so often? I know your face--Miss Cynthia West, I believe? Can you stay?"