lt tears up into his
old eyes, and shaking him all over with a tremor as of palsy. The scared
faces appeared to come closer to Phoebe, to whom these moments seemed
like years. Had her trust been vain? Softly, but with an excitement
beyond control, she touched him on the arm.

"That's true," said Tozer, half-crying. "Something's got to be done. We
can't all stand here for ever, Phoebe; it's him as has to be thought of.
Show it to him, poor gentleman, if he ain't past knowing; and burn it,
and let us hear of it no more."

Solemnly, in the midst of them all, Phoebe held up the paper before the
eyes of the guilty man. If he understood it or not, no one could tell.
He did not move, but stared blankly at her and it. Then she held it over
the lamp and let it blaze and drop into harmless ashes in the midst of
them all. Tozer dropped down into his elbow-chair sniffing and sobbing.
Mr. May stood quite still, with a look of utter dulness and stupidity
coming over the face in which so much terror had been. If he understood
what had passed, it was only in feeling, not in intelligence. He grew
still and dull in the midst of that strange madness which all the time
was only half-madness, a mixture of conscious excitement and anxiety
with that which passes the boundaries of consciousness. For the moment
he was stilled into stupid idiotcy, and looked at them with vacant
eyes. As for the others, Northcote was the only one who divined at
all what this scene meant. To Reginald it was like a scene in a
pantomime--bewildering dumb show, with no sense or meaning in it. It was
he who spoke first, with a certain impatience of the occurrence which he
did not understand.

"Will you come home, sir, now?" he said. "Come home, for Heaven's sake!
Northcote will give you an arm. He's very ill," Reginald added, looking
round him pitifully in his ignorance; "what you are thinking of I can't
tell--but he's ill and--delirious. It was Mr. Copperhead who brought him
here against my will. Excuse me, Miss Beecham--now I must take him
home."

"Yes," said Phoebe. The tears came into her eyes as she looked at him; he
was not thinking of her at the moment, but she knew he had thought of
her, much and tenderly, and she felt that she might never see him again.
Phoebe would have liked him to know what she had done, and to know that
what she had done was for him chiefly--in order to recompense him a
little, poor fellow, for the heart he had given her, which she co