Cynthia came softly into the room. She looked timidly towards Hubert's chair, then rushed forward and rang the bell violently. She had had some fear of the result of Enid's visit, and her fear was certainly justified.Hubert had fainted away when his visitor had left the room.

It was not until some time afterwards that Cynthia allowed him to talk again. She had medicaments of various kinds to apply, and insisted upon his being perfectly quiet. She had wanted him to go to bed again; but he had resisted this proposition; and, in consequence, he was still in the sitting-room, though lying upon the sofa, at the hour of half-past eight that evening, when the light was fading, and Cynthia was at his side.

"You feel better now, do you not?" she said to him.

"Yes, thank you." The tone was curiously dispirited.

"I must call Jenkins, and you must go to bed."

He caught her hand.

"Not yet, Cynthia—I want to say something."

"To-morrow," she suggested.

"No, not to-morrow—to-night. I am quite well able to talk. Cynthia, where is your father?"

The question was utterly unexpected.

"My father?" she echoed. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because I have an impression that he is in England, and that you have seen him lately."

"If I had," said Cynthia tremulously, "I should be bound not to tell any one."

"Ah, that is true! And you would not trust even me," he remarked, with a great sigh. "Well, I suppose that you are right!"

"I trust you perfectly," she said.

"You have no reason to do so. Cynthia, do you know why Enid Vane came to-day?"

"Yes,—she told me."

"She is engaged to Mr. Evandale. She has set me free."

There was a silence. Cynthia did not move; and at last Hubert said, in a stifled voice—

"I love one woman, and one only. What can I say to her?"

"Nothing but that," said Cynthia softly; and then she turned and kissed him.

"I dare not say even that," he muttered.

"Why not? You told me once of an obstacle—Enid Vane was the obstacle, was she not?""One obstacle. But there was another."

"Another!" exclaimed Cynthia. "What could that be?"

She was kneeling beside him, her hand locked fast in his, her arm upon his shoulder. A sort of sob broke from his lips.

"Oh, my darling," he said, "I am the last man that you ought ever to have loved!"

"But I love you now, Hubert."

"I am a villian, Cynthia—a mean miserable cur! Can't you accept that fact, and leave me without asking why?"

"No, I cannot, Hubert; I don't believe it."

"It is no good telling me that—I know myself too well. Believe all that I say, Cynthia, and give me up. Don't make me tell you why."

"I shall always love you," she whispered, "whether you are bad or good."

"Suppose that I had injured any one that was very dear to you—saved myself from punishment at his expense? I daren't go any farther. Is there nothing that you can suppose that I have done—the very hardest thing in the whole world for you to forgive? You can't forgive it, I know; to tell you means to cut myself off from you for the rest of my life; and yet I cannot make up my mind to take advantage of your ignorance. I have resolved, Cynthia, that I will not say another word of—of love to you—until you know the truth."

She gazed at him, her lips growing white, her eyes dilating with sudden terror.

"There is only one thing," she said at length, "that I—that I——"

"That you could not forgive. I am answered, Cynthia; it is that one thing that I have done."

He spoke very calmly, but his face was white with a pallor like that of death. She remained motionless; it seemed as if she could scarcely dare to breathe, and her face was as pale as his own.

"Hubert," she said presently, only just above her breath, "you must be saying what you do not mean!"

"I would to God that I did not mean it!" he exclaimed, bestirring himself and trying to rise. "Get up, Cynthia; I cannot lie here and see you kneeling there. Rather let me kneel to you; for I have wronged you—I have wronged your father beyond forgiveness. It was I—I who killed Sydney Vane!"

He was standing now; but she still knelt beside the sofa, with her face full of terror.

"Hubert," she said caressingly, "you do not know what you say. Sit down, my darling, and keep quiet. You will be better soon."

"I am not raving," he answered her; "I am only speaking the truth. God help me! All these years I have kept the secret, Cynthia; but it is true—I swear before God that it is true! It was I who killed Sidney Vane. Now curse me if you will, as your father did long years ago."

He fell back on the sofa, and buried his face in his hands with a moan of intolerable pain.

There came a long silence. Cynthia did not move; she also had hidden her face.

"Oh," she said at last, "I do not know what to do! My poor father—my poor father! Think of the shame and anguish that he went through! Oh, how could you bear to let him suffer so?" And then she wept bitterly and unrestrainedly; and Hubert sat with his head bowed in his hands.

But after a time she became calm; and then, without looking up, she said, in a low voice—

"I should like to hear it all now. Tell me how it happened."

He started and removed his hands from his face. It was so haggard, so miserable, that Cynthia, as she glanced at him, could not forbear an impulse of pity. But she averted her head and would not look at him again.

"You must tell me everything now," she said.

And so he told the story. He found it hard to begin; but as he went on, a certain relief came to him, in spite of shame and sorrow, at the disburthening himself of his secret. He did not spare himself. He told the tale very fully, and, little by little, it seemed to Cynthia that she began to understand his life, his character, his very soul, as she had never understood them before. She understood, but she did not love.

The confession left her cold; her father's wrongs had turned her heart to stone."And now," he said, when he had finished his story, "you can fetch your father and clear him in the eyes of the world as soon as you like. I will take any punishment that the law allots me. But I think that I shall not have to bear it long. Even a life sentence ends one day, thank God!"

Then Cynthia spoke.

"You think," she said very coldly, "that I shall tell your story—that I shall denounce you to the police?"

"As you please, Cynthia," he answered, with a sadness born of despair.

"You throw the burden on me!" she said. "You have thrown your burdens on other people's shoulders all your life, it seems. But now you must bear your own." She rose and moved away from him. "I shall not accuse you. Your confession is safe enough with me. You forget that I—I loved you once. I cannot give you up to justice even for my father's sake. You must manage the matter for yourself."

"Cynthia," he cried hoarsely—"Cynthia, be merciful!"

"Had you any mercy for my father?" she asked him, looking at him with eyes in which the reproach was terrible to his inmost soul. "Did you ever think what he had to bear?" Her hand was on the door. "I am going now," she said—"I am going to my father; I have learned the place in which he lives. But I shall not tell him what you have just told me. Justify him to the world if you like; till that is done, I will never speak to you again."

"Cynthia—Cynthia!" cried the wretched man.

He rose from the sofa and stretched out his arms blindly towards her. But she would not relent.

As she left the room, he fell to the floor—insensible for the second time that day. She heard the crashing fall—she knew that he was in danger; but her heart was hardened, and she would not look back. The only thing she did was to call Jenkins before she left the house and send him to his master. And then she went out into the street, and said to herself that she would never enter the house again.

Jenkins went up to the drawing-room, and found Mr. Lepel lying on the floor. He and his wife managed with some difficulty to get him back to bed. Then they sent for the Doctor. But, when the Doctor came, he shook his head, and looked very serious over Hubert's state. A relapse had taken place; he was delirious again; and no one could say whether he would recover from this second attack. Cynthia was asked for at once; but Cynthia was nowhere to be found.

"She will come back, no doubt, sir," Jenkins said.

"I hope she will," the Doctor answered, "for Mr. Lepel's chances are considerably lessened by her absence."

But the night passed, and the next day followed, and the next; but Cynthia never came.

In the meantime there was one person in the house who knew more of her than she chose to say. Miss Sabina Meldreth had been keeping her eye, by Mrs. Vane's orders, upon Cynthia West. She had listened at the door during the conversation between Enid and Hubert, but without much result. Their voices had been subdued, and she had gained nothing for her pains. But it was somewhat different during the interview between Cynthia and Hubert. The emotion of the two speakers had been rather too difficult to repress. Some few of Hubert's words, as well as Cynthia's passionate sobs, had reached her ears; and Cynthia's last sentences, spoken in a clear penetrating voice, had not been lost on her. She was behind the folding-door between the two rooms when Cynthia made her exit. Sabina Meldreth's heart beat with excitement. Miss West would go to her father, would she? Then she, Sabina, would follow her—would track the felon to his hiding-place! The hint that Hubert could clear him if he would was lost upon her in the delight of this discovery. She could not afford to miss this opportunity of pleasing Mrs. Vane and earning three hundred pounds. She followed Cynthia down-stairs, seized a hat from a peg in the hall, and walked out into the street.

It was already dark, but the girl's tall graceful figure was easily discernible at some little distance. Miss Meldreth followed her hurriedly; she was determined to lose no chance of discovering Westwood and delivering him up to the authorities.

Down one street after another did she track the convict's daughter. Cynthia went through quiet quarters—if she had ventured into a crowded thoroughfare, she would soon have been lost to view. But she had no suspicion that she was being pursued, or she might have been more careful. In a quiet little court on the north side of Holborn she presently came to a halt. There was a dingy little house with "Lodgings to Let" on a card in the window, and at the door of this house she stopped and gave three knocks with her knuckles. In a few moments the door was opened, and she stepped in. Sabina could not see who admitted her.

She waited for some time. A light appeared after a while in an upper window, and one or two shadows crossed the white linen blind. Sabina went a little higher up the court and watched. Shadows came again—first, the shadow of a woman with a hat upon her head—ah, that was Miss West!—next that of a man—nearer the window and more distinct. Sabina thought that she recognised the slight stoop of the shoulders, the stiff and halting gait.

"I've caught you at last, have I, Mr. Reuben Dare!" she said to herself, with a chuckle, as she noted the number of the house and the name of the court. "Well, I shall get three hundred pounds for this night's work! I'll wait a bit and see what happens next."

What happened next was that the lights were extinguished and that the house seemed to be shut up.

"Safe for the night!" said Sabina, chuckling to herself. "I won't let the grass grow under my feet this time. I'll tell the police to-morrow morning, and I'll write to Mrs. Vane as well. He shan't escape us now!"

She retraced her steps to Russell Square, and at once indited a letter to Mrs. Vane with a full account of all that she had seen and heard. She slipped out to post it that very night, and lay down with the full intention of going to Scotland Yard the next morning. But in the morning she was delayed for an hour only; but that hour was fatal to her plans. When the police visited the house in Vernon Court, they found that the rooms were empty, and that Cynthia and her father had disappeared. Nobody knew anything about them; and the police retired in an exceedingly bad humor, pouring anathemas upon Sabina's head. But Sabina did not care; she had received news which had stupefied her for a time and hindered her in the execution of her designs—little Dick Vane was dead.

The child had never rallied from the accident which had befallen him. For several days and nights he had lain in a state of coma; and then, still unconscious, he had passed away. His watchers scarcely knew at what moment he ceased to breathe; even the General, who had seldom left his side, could not tell exactly when the child died. So peacefully the little life came to a close that it seemed only that his sleep was preternaturally long. And with him a long course of perplexity and deceit seemed likely also to have its end.

Mrs. Vane had disappointed and displeased the General during the boy's illness; she had steadily refused to nurse him—even to see him, towards the end. The General was an easy and indulgent husband, but he noticed that his wife seemed to have no love for the child who was all in all to him. The worst came when Flossy refused to look at the boy's dead face when he was gone. The General reproached her for her hardness of heart, and declared bitterly that the child had never known a mother's love. And Flossy did not easily forgive the imputation, although she professed to accept it meekly, and to excuse herself by saying that her nerves were too delicate to bear the shock of seeing a dead child.

Troubles seemed to heap themselves upon the General's head. His boy had gone; Enid, whom he tenderly loved, had left his house; Hubert, to whom also he was much attached, lay ill again, and was scarcely expected to recover. By the time the funeral was over, the General had worked himself up to such a state of nervous anxiety, that it was felt by his friends that some immediate change must be made in his manner of life. And here a suggestion of Flossy's became unexpectedly useful—she proposed that the General should go to his sister's for a time, and that she should stay at Hubert's lodging.

It was not that she cared very much for her brother, or that she was likely to prove a good nurse, but that she was afraid, from what Sabina said, that Hubert might be doing something rash—making confession perhaps, or taking Cynthia West into his confidence. If she were on the spot, she felt that she could hinder any such rash proceeding with Sabina's help.

But Sabina was not to the fore. When she heard that Mrs. Vane was coming to town, she threw up her engagement and went back to her aunt's at Camden Town. A trained nurse took her place, and Mrs. Vane lodged in the house.Contrary to the doctor's expectations, Hubert survived the crisis of his fever, and passed at last into the convalescent stage; though very weak, he was pronounced to be out of danger, and he began to grow stronger every day. But, as every one who had known him in happier days had reason to remark, he bore himself like an utterly broken-hearted, broken-spirited man. It seemed as if he would never hold up his head again—all hope went from him when Cynthia left his side.