she repeated, "I want you to advise me."

"Am I not always ready for that?" returned Mr. Royal, his smile fading
before the gravity of her expression.

"There is something so hard to be done," she answered.

"Then, must it be done?"

"Oh, yes, that's the only thing about it I am quite sure of. It must be
done, and directly, too. It may be too late now, but we must try. What
troubles me is how it can be done so that we may be certain."

"Certain of what?"

"Certain that it reaches him," answered Elizabeth. Then she looked at
her father, and remembered that he could not understand her. "I must
tell you," she said. "It is like a nightmare. It oppresses me to think
of it. I feel guilty to believe it, and yet I don't dare to deny it to
myself, for fear of the consequences. It's about Mr. Edmonson, father."

"Oh!" said her listener in a tone far from pleased.

"And Mr. Archdale, added Elizabeth. Not that who the people are makes
any difference. Our duties would be just the same knowing the,--knowing
what I do." Her father sat watching her in silence with his keenest
gaze. "There is no love lost between the two men, as you know," she went
on. "Mr. Archdale is lofty, and wouldn't condescend to anything more
than a dislike that he hasn't tried to conceal, since Mr. Edmonson
ceased being his guest. But with Mr. Edmonson it's different; when he
feels, he acts; and once in a while there is an unrestraint about him
which is frightful; it makes me think of lava breaking through the crust
of a volcano. I believe there is something volcanic in his nature; you
can't go deep into it without danger. And there is danger now. Father,
there is danger now." As Elizabeth repeated her statement she leaned
forward a little and looked at her father, her eyes full of earnestness
and dread.

"In what way, and to whom?" asked Mr. Royal.

"To Mr. Archdale," she answered.

It was not Mr. Royal's way to protest or deny; he liked to get in his
evidence first of all. "What makes you think so?" he asked.

"A good many little things that have come back to me in confirmation,
but especially a speech of Mr. Edmonson's that I overheard one day at
Seascape. Stray shots," he said, "have taken off more superfluous kings
and men than the world has any idea of. I did not know at the time whom
he had been speaking about, and I forgot the speech; it seemed to me to
have no object. But now it does, and now I remember a word or two
besides that showed m