"

"And he--Everard--for God's sake--"

"He told me nothing, Harrie. You and he keep your secrets well. He
told me nothing, and he is gone. He will never come back here more."

He looked at her keenly, suspiciously, as he said it. Alas! the
intermittent fever was taking its hot fit again. But she dropped her
face on his shoulder and hid it.

"Has he left the village, Everard?" very faintly.

"I can not say. I only know I have forbidden him this place," he
replied. "Harrie, Harrie, my little wife! You are very merciless!
You are torturing me, and I--I would die to save you an instant's pain!"

At that eloquent cry she slipped out of his arms and fell on her knees
before him, her clasped hands hiding her face.

"May God grant me a short life!" was her frenzied cry, "for I never can
tell you--never, Everard, not on my dying bed--the secret I have sworn
to keep!"

"Sworn to keep!" It flashed upon him like a revelation. "Sworn to
whom? to your father, Harrie?"

"Do not ask me! I can tell you nothing--I dare not! I am bound by an
awful vow! And, oh, I think I am the most wretched creature in the
wide world!"

He raised her up; he kissed the white, despairing face again and
again--a rain of rapturous kisses. A ton weight seemed suddenly lifted
off his heart.

"I see it all," he cried--"I see it all now! Fool that I was not to
understand sooner. There was some mystery, some guilt, perhaps, in
Captain Hunsden's life, and he revealed it to you on his death-bed, and
made you swear to keep his secret. Am I not right?"

She did not look up. He could feel her shivering from head to foot.

"Yes, Everard."

"And this man has in some way found it out, and wishes to trade upon
it, to extort money from you? I have often heard of such things. Am I
right again?"

"Yes, Everard," very faint and sad.

"Then, my own dearest, leave me to deal with him; see him and fear him
no more. I will seek him out. I will not ask to know it. I will pay
him his price and send him about his business."

He rose as he spoke. But Harriet clung to him with a strange, white
face.

"No, no, no!" she cried. "It would not do. You could not satisfy him.
You don't know--" She stopped distractedly. "Oh, Everard, I can't
explain. You are all kindness, all generosity, all goodness; but I
must settle with this man myself. Don't go near him--don't ask to see
him. It could do no good."

"I am not right, then, after all