"At last you are alone," said Dillwyn, advancing to meet her. "I thought that fellow would never go. I could only see the top of his head, and I longed for a pea-shooter."

"It was Dicky Browne. And at all events he saw you. And fancy— he wouldn't tell me you were there, just to tease me!"

"Or perhaps to keep you a little longer to himself," said Dillwyn, who was too thorough a lover not to be jealous of every one.

"What a fancy!" said Agatha, laughing. "You must have a brilliant wit to imagine Dicky in love." She stopped laughing and grew very grave. "Such an unfortunate thing has happened," said she; and she told him of little Vera's mistake.

"What does it matter," said he. "The sooner every one learns that we belong to each other the better. Where is Mrs. Greatorex? If I could see her, even a word would explain matters."

"Jack, I entreat you not to speak to her, here, before all these people." She grew very pale. "She is quite sure to say something dreadful to you. I beg you to wait."

"But for how long?"—impatiently.

"Until to-morrow, at all events. And if you wait for even longer than that—- Well, well"—seeing his expression—"until to-morrow. Do you know, Jack, I came here just now only to ask you to go away, and so avoid seeing Aunt Hilda at all."

"That I won't do," said Dillwyn firmly. "You are mine, and I claim you. You yourself, of your own free-will have given yourself to me, and do you think I shall make little of that gift? No, no; come back with me to the grounds, and let all the world see how it is with us."

She slipped her hand through his arm, and turned to go back to the tennis-grounds. It was a most satisfactory answer. Half-way down the alley, however, a sound behind them made them turn. There stood the unhappy Edwy, waving his long arms and gesticulating frantically. He must have followed Dillwyn (for whom he had a great affection) through the little gate. He was evidently in a frightful state of excitement. His face was livid, his eyes staring. He was looking through an interstice in the rhododendron hedge, and his hands, extended, were grasping the air convulsively.

"Oh poor Edwy!" said Agatha. "Something is troubling him. Let us go back."

"He has been growing much worse of late," said Dillwyn, studying the unfortunate idiot attentively. "His mother's death seems to have preyed upon him a good deal. Poor boy! I suppose she was his sole comfort. He has grown more violent and unreasonable, and the form his increasing mania has taken is a hatred of his father. Every one is remarking that. He cannot see him without going into a frightful state of excitement."

"What is it, my poor fellow?" said Dillwyn gently, who always spoke to him as though he could hear.

He tried to release his hand from Agatha's arm. There was a difficulty about doing this, the idiot being strong; but Dillwyn had a strange influence over him. He made a slight gesture, and at once the boy turned to him, letting Agatha go.

"Sho! Sho!" he growled in his unnatural voice—a voice full of living anguish, however—pointing through the hole in the rhododendrons.

Dillwyn and Agatha followed his gaze, and saw Darkham far away over there, talking to Mrs. Greatorex, who had evidently come down to the courts.

The idiot pointed again to his father, and lifted his hands and shook them violently. There was horror and an awful hatred in his wild black eyes that were so like Darkham's.

"Sho! Sho!" shouted Edwy again, not knowing that he shouted; and then he turned to Agatha, staring at her, as if to compel her attention, and pointed again to his father, and suddenly drew a handkerchief from his pocket.

He folded it, clumsily, it is true, and then, with a weird movement, laid it across his mouth and nostrils, and pressed his hands upon it. With all his might he pressed.

She grew deadly pale. Had he—had that man murdered his wife? Oh no! Oh no! It was impossible.

The boy was still pressing his hands against his mouth, and pinching his nostrils to keep out his breath. He was growing livid. Dillwyn went to him and tore down his hands. The idiot gasped, and then laughed in that horribly foolish way so distressing in those whose minds are affected.

"Sho! Sho!" cried the poor creature again in heartrending accents. It was as though the mere sight of his father roused all his passions within him. He kept pointing frantically to where Darkham stood, and presently his cry rose into a fierce scream— the scream of a wounded animal.

Dillwyn laid his hand upon his arm and drew him gently away from the opening in the hedge through which his father could be seen. Dillwyn's own face was very pale. For the first time a suspicion that Mrs. Darkham had been foully murdered entered into his brain.

He drew back Edwy with a certain force, and the boy fell to the ground in short but fierce convulsions.

Dillwyn loosened his collar, and soon it was all over. Edwy rose, looked strangely round him, and with a queer twitching of the features rushed past Dillwyn before he could prevent him, and disappeared into the wood.

"Poor fellow!" said Dillwyn sadly.

Agatha struggled with herself, and then burst into tears.

"My darling! What is it? Agatha!" The hideous thought that had come to himself he would not have revealed to her for all the world, and now a fear that she, too, had entertained it horrified him. He held her to him, her head pressed against his breast.

"Oh, I knew it! I knew it all through: I felt it," sobbed she violently. Words of Darkham's that day in the wood came back to her. 'For the sake of the heaven I have lost!' How had he lost it? "Jack, he killed her! He murdered her!"

"Agatha, my beloved! Why have such a thought as that? You must remember that that poor boy—-"

"Oh, no, no! It is true. He"—trembling—"he smothered her! Didn't you see how Edwy pressed that handkerchief across his own nose and mouth, as if to show something? And you tell me the poor boy has shown hatred to his father of late. It is plain. It is quite, quite plain. Oh, poor boy! Jack"—in a nervous whisper; she was now shaking from head to foot—"he must have seen it! Seen his father kill his mother!" She cowered as if in terror.

"Agatha, I entreat you to compose yourself. All this is mere supposition."

"It is not. It is all the awful terrible truth! And what frightens me is, that he will kill you too, if he can. You laughed at me last night. You made light of my fears, but I tell you to beware of him." She burst into bitter weeping again. "I am sure he will try to kill you, and you—you will do nothing to save yourself—not even for my sake. And yet you say you love me."

"Love seems a poor word," said Dillwyn. "My dear, dear girl, have pity on me, if not upon yourself. Don't cry like that. I'll do anything you like—anything, if you will only try and be happy again. Why, look here now, Agatha; it isn't altogether so easy a matter to murder a person without being found out as you seem to imagine."

"You, too, then"—eagerly—"think that—-"

"It is impossible to know what to think," said he, with some emotion. He paced to and fro upon the path, his head down-bent, pondering. Suddenly he lifted it. "Look here, this has got nothing to do with us in any way," he said. "Why spoil this hour because of it?"

"It has something to do with me, at all events," said the girl, who was now deadly pale.

"I have a weight on my heart, Jack! I must tell you about it." She drew her breath sharply, but with a great courage went on. "I think now—I hardly understood it then—but I think that before his wife died he—wished to marry me."

"Well!" Dillwyn's face was hard and cold. But he caught her to him, and pressed her face down against him. It would be easier for her to speak like that, where her face could not be seen. His poor, poor darling! What she had gone through!

"Well"—miserably—"I think now that but for me—he— might not have killed her! Oh, Jack!"

Jack lifted her face and kissed her.

"Think something else," said he. "That you are my own brave girl, and that morbid thoughts are unworthy of you. Even if what you say was the case, Agatha, still it leaves your soul as white as heaven. There now, beloved! Will you grieve me? Think one thing more, Agatha. Think of me and of my love for you—my undying love. If that will not help you, then"—with a tender smile—

"I shall be afraid you do not care for it."

She clung to him.

"I'm afraid, after all, you will have your own way, and that I shall not be able to speak to Mrs. Greatorex to-day," said he presently. "Your eyes are sad tell-tales. Come with me into the wood, and down to the river. There we can bathe them."