but
when the unconscious man came to his senses and opened his eyes he
fainted again when his gaze fell on Paul. Deborah, therefore, in her
rough, practical way, suggested that as Beecot was "upsetting him" he
had better go. It was in a state of perplexity that Paul had gone away,
but he was cheered on his homeward way by a hasty assurance given by
Miss Junk that Sylvia would meet him in the gardens, "near them niggers
without clothes," said Deborah.

It was strange that the sight of the brooch should have produced such an
effect on Aaron, and his fainting confirmed Paul's suspicions that the
old man had not a clean conscience. But what the serpent brooch had to
do with the matter Beecot could not conjecture. It was certainly an odd
piece of jewellery, and not particularly pretty, but that the merest
glimpse of it should make Norman faint was puzzling in the extreme.

"Apparently it is associated with something disagreeable in the man's
mind," soliloquised Paul, pacing the pavement and keeping a sharp
look-out for Sylvia, "perhaps with death, else the effect would scarcely
have been so powerful as to produce a fainting fit. Yet Aaron can't know
my mother. Hum! I wonder what it means."

While he was trying to solve the mystery a light touch on his arm made
him wheel round, and he beheld Sylvia smiling at him. While he was
looking along the Embankment for her coming she had slipped down Norfolk
Street and through the gardens, to where the wrestlers clutched at empty
air. In her low voice, which was the sweetest of all sounds to Paul, she
explained this, looking into his dark eyes meanwhile. "But I can't stay
long," finished Sylvia. "My father is still ill, and he wants me to
return and nurse him."

"Has he explained why he fainted?" asked Paul, anxiously.

"No; he refuses to speak on the matter. Why did he faint, Paul?"

The young man looked puzzled. "Upon my word I don't know," he said.
"Just as I was showing him a brooch I wished to pawn he went off."

"What kind of a brooch?" asked the girl, also perplexed.

Paul took the case out of his breast pocket, where it had been since the
previous day. "My mother sent it to me," he explained; "you see she
guesses that I am hard up, and, thanks to my father, she can't send me
money. This piece of jewellery she has had for many years, but as it is
rather old-fashioned she never wears it. So she sent it to me, hoping
that I might get ten pounds or so on it. A friend of min