ant, I would be
lying now in Brithlow Wood yonder, as dead as any Kingsland in the
family vault."

And then, while Lady Kingsland gazed at him breathlessly, Sir Everard
related his midnight adventure.

"Good heavens!" my lady cried, clasping him in her arms. "Oh, to think
what might have happened! My boy--my boy!"

"Very true, mother; but a miss is as good as a mile, you know.
Poetical justice befell my assailant; and here I am safe and sound,
sipping chocolate."

"And the preserver of your life, Everard--where is he?"

"Upstairs, waiting like patience on a monument; and by the same token,
fasting all this time! But it isn't a he, _ma mere_; it's a she."

"What?"

Sir Everard laughed.

"Such a mystified face, mother! Oh; it's highly sensational and
melodramatic, I promise you! Sit down and hear the sequel."

And then, eloquently and persuasively, Sir Everard repeated Miss
Sybilla Silver's extraordinary story, and Lady Kingsland was properly
shocked.

"Disguised herself in men's clothes! My dear Everard, what a dreadful
creature she must be!"

"Not at all dreadful, mother. She is as sensitive and womanly a young
lady as ever I saw in my life. And, she's a very pretty girl, too."

Lady Kingsland looked suspiciously at her son. She highly disapproved
of pretty girls where he was concerned; but the handsome face was frank
and open as the day.

"Now don't be suspicious, Lady Kingsland. I'm not going to fall in
love with Miss Sybilla Silver, I give you my word and honor. She saved
my life, remember. May I not fetch her here?"

"What! in men's clothes, and before your sister? Everard, how dare
you?"

Sir Everard broke into a peal of boyish laughter that made the room
ring.

"I don't believe she's in men's clothes!" exclaimed Mildred, suddenly.
"Honorine told me robbers must have been in my dressing-room last
night--half my things were stolen. I understand it now--Everard was
the robber."

"I am going for her, mother. Remember she is friendless, and that she
saved your son's life."

He quitted the room with the last word. That claim, he knew, was one
his mother would never repudiate.

"Oh!" she said, lying back in her chair pale and faint, "to think what
might have happened!"

As she spoke her son re-entered the room, and by his side a young
lady--so stately, so majestic in her dark beauty, that involuntarily
the mother and daughter arose.

"My mother, this young lady saved my life