ly, stating that it was no longer valuable to them, or containing an
acknowledgment of my claim to the fifty pounds reward. I might sell my
knowledge of Miss Ollivier for fifty pounds. In doing so I might render
her a great service, by restoring her to her proper sphere in society.
But the recollection of Tardif's description of her as looking terrified
and hunted recurred vividly to me. The advertisement put her age as
twenty-one. I should not have judged her so old myself, especially since
her hair had been cut short. But if she was twenty-one, she was old
enough to form plans and purposes for herself, and to choose, as far as
she could, her own mode of living. I was not prepared to deliver her up,
until I knew something more of both sides of the question.

Settled--that if I could see Messrs. Scot and Brown, and learn something
about Miss Ollivier's friends, I might be then able to decide whether I
would betray her to them but I would not write. Also, that I must see
her again first, and once more urge her to have confidence in me. If she
would trust me with her secret, I would be as true to her as a friend as
I meant to be true to Julia.

Having come to these conclusions, I cut the advertisement carefully out
of the crumpled paper, and placed it in my pocket-book with portraits of
my mother and Julia, Here were mementos of the three women I cared most
for in the world: my mother first, Julia second, and my mysterious
patient third.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.

STOLEN WATERS ARE SWEET.

I was neither in good spirits nor in good temper during the next few
days. My mother and Julia appeared astonished at this, for I was not
ordinarily as touchy and fractious as I showed myself immediately after
my sojourn in Sark.

I was ashamed of it myself. The new house, which occupied their time and
thoughts so agreeably, worried me as it had not done before. I made
every possible excuse not to be sent to it, or taken to it, several
times a day.

The discussions over Julia's wedding-dress also, which had by no means
been decided upon on Saturday afternoon, began to bore me beyond words.
Whenever I could, I made my patients a pretext for getting away from
them.

One of them, a cousin of my mother--as I have said, we were all cousins
of one degree or another--Captain Carey, met me on the quay, a day or
two after my return. He had been a commander in the Royal Navy, and,
after cruising about in all manner of unhealthy lati