y mind, father," she said quietly. "But if
Mr. Hardcastle is alive, I shall go mad!"

"He is not. Mannering was positive."

"Nevertheless, he may be. And if he is, then Mr. May probably is."

"Grotesque, horrible, worse than death even! Keep your mind away from
it, my darling, for the love of God!"

"Who knows what we can suffer till we are called to find out? No, I
shall not go mad. But I must know to-day. I cannot eat or sleep until I
know. I shall not live long if they don't tell me quickly."

Her father trembled and grew very white.

"This is the worst of all," he said. "These things will leave a burning
brand. I am ruined by them, and my life thrown down. I, that thought I
was strong, prove so weak that I can forget my own daughter, and out of
cowardly misery speak of a thing she should never have known. You have
your revenge, Mary, for I shall go a broken man from this hour. Nothing
can ever be the same again. My self-respect is gone. I could have
endured everything else--the things that I dreaded. All I could have
suffered and survived; but to have forgotten and stabbed you--"

"Don't, don't--come--we have got each other, father--we have still got
each other. The dead understand everything. Who else matters? Go to your
room, and let your dear mind rest. I am not suffering. We cannot alter
the past, and who would wish it, if they believe in eternal life? I
would not call Tom back if I had the power to do so. Be sure of that."

She spoke comfortable words to him, and supported him to his room. She
knew the police would soon arrive, and though they could not report
concerning the life, or death, of Peter Hardcastle, she doubted not that
definite information relating to him must come to Chadlands quickly.
Upon that another life might hang. Yet, when the medical man arrived
from Newton, he could only say that Septimus May was dead. He was a
friend of Mannering, and knew the London opinion, that this form
of apparent death might in reality conceal latent possibilities of
resuscitation; but he spoke with absolute certainty. He was old, and had
nearly fifty years of professional experience behind him.

"The man is dead, or I never saw death," he declared. "By a hundred
independent evidences we can be positive. Post-mortem stains have
already appeared, and were they ever known on a living body? Of the
others who died in this room I know nothing personally; but here is
death, and in twenty-four hours the fact will