am eager
to relieve you of all anxiety, so far as I am concerned. I have not
said one word--I have not even let slip the slightest hint--which could
inform Father Benwell of that past event in our lives to which your
letter alludes. Your secret is a sacred secret to me; and it has been,
and shall be, sacredly kept.

There is a sentence in your letter which has given me great pain. You
reiterate the cruel language of the bygone time. You say, "Heaven knows
I have little reason to trust you."

I have reasons, on my side, for not justifying myself--except under
certain conditions. I mean under conditions which might place me in a
position to serve and advise you as a friend or brother. In that case,
I undertake to prove, even to you, that it was a cruel injustice ever
to have doubted me, and that there is no man living whom you can more
implicitly trust than myself.

My address, when I am in London, is at the head of this page.

III.

_From Dr. Wybrow to Mr. Winterfield._

Dear Sir--I have received your letter, mentioning that you wish to
accompany me, at my next visit to the asylum, to see the French boy, so
strangely associated with the papers delivered to you by Father Benwell.

Your proposal reaches me too late. The poor creature's troubled life
has come to an end. He never rallied from the exhausting effect of the
fever. To the last he was attended by his mother.

I write with true sympathy for that excellent lady--but I cannot conceal
from you or from myself that this death is not to be regretted. In a
case of the same extraordinary kind, recorded in print, the patient
recovered from the fever, and his insanity returned with his returning
health.

Faithfully yours, JOSEPH WYBROW.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SADDEST OF ALL WORDS.

ON the tenth morning, dating from the dispatch of Father Benwell's last
letter to Rome, Penrose was writing in the study at Ten Acres Lodge,
while Romayne sat at the other end of the room, looking listlessly at a
blank sheet of paper, with the pen lying idle beside it. On a sudden
he rose, and, snatching up paper and pen, threw them irritably into the
fire.

"Don't trouble yourself to write any longer," he said to Penrose. "My
dream is over. Throw my manuscripts into the waste paper basket, and
never speak to me of literary work again."

"Every man devoted to literature has these fits of despondency," Penrose
answered. "Don't think of your work. Send for your horse, and trust to