father! He hoped they could be friends, as
all business partners should be. Of course they could never be
anything more than that; for he was not forgetting his obligation to
Rose--oh no, not for one minute.

How infernally slow those chaps up above were now, and why didn't they
let down the rope? Were they going to keep him waiting in that beastly
hole forever? It really seemed so.

By a simple process of reasoning, and the putting together of the
various bits of information gained from her father, Mary Darrell had
reached the conclusion that the young man whose fortunes had been so
strangely interwoven with hers during the past ten days was the
rightful owner of the mine that her father had claimed for so many
years. She was too loyal to the latter to believe for a moment that he
had consciously attempted to defraud Peveril of his rights, but
credited all his actions to the sad mental condition of which she had
only now become aware.

"Poor, dear papa!" she said to herself. "He has done splendidly to
take care of me for so long as he has, and now I will take care of
him. We will go away from this horrid place, where he gets so excited,
and find some little home in the East, where he can rest until his
mind is wholly restored.

"In the meantime this Mr. Peveril can have the old mine, to do with as
he pleases. I shall let him know that we consider it his property
before he has a chance to even make a claim against it. I mustn't let
him see for a moment how badly we feel about it, though, for he seems
very nice, and has certainly placed us under a great obligation by
coming to our rescue so splendidly. I wonder how he knew that papa and
I were down in that awful place?"

Having got her father to his room, told Aunty Nimmo to prepare for
company, and hurriedly changed her dress, Mary Darrell greeted the
expected guests according to her privately arranged programme, and
invited them in to supper. After seeing them seated at the table and
provided with a bountiful meal, she left them on the plea that her
father needed her attention.

The girl had not been gone many minutes, and Peveril's friends were
still congratulating him upon having come into his fortune, at the
same time speculating whether the "Folly" was worth anything or not,
when she re-entered the room with a frightened expression on her face.
Addressing herself to Major Arkell, she said:

"Would you mind coming up to see my father, sir? I fear he is very