hile. "Then there
is no special urgency?" she repeated. "And James--forgive me for asking
it--are you, indeed, leaving England because of this--this matter of
which you have just told me?"

He bent his head in answer.

Then she said deliberately: "Your conscience, James, is too scrupulous.
I do not think that there is any reason why you should not stay. When
Charles and I were in Italy," she went on in a toneless, monotonous
voice, "I met some of those young noblemen who in times of pestilence go
disguised to nurse the sick and bury the dead. It is that work of
charity, dear friend, which you have been performing in our unhappy
house. You have been nursing the sick--nay, more, you have been
tending"--she waited, then in a low voice she added--"the dead--the dead
that are yet alive."

Mottram's soul leapt into his eyes. "Then you bid me stay?" he asked.

"For the present," she answered, "I beg you to stay. But only so if it
is indeed true that your presence is not really required in Jamaica."

"I swear, Catherine, that all goes sufficiently well there." Again he
fixed his honest, ardent eyes on her face.

And now James Mottram was filled with a great exultation of spirit. He
felt that Catherine's soul, incapable of even the thought of evil,
shamed and made unreal the temptation which had seemed till just now one
which could only be resisted by flight. Catherine was right; he had been
over scrupulous.

There was proof of it in the blessed fact that even now, already, the
poison which had seemed to possess him, that terrible longing for
another man's wife, had left him, vanishing in that same wife's pure
presence. It was when he was alone--alone in his great house on the
hill, that the devil entered into him, whispering that it was an awful
thing such a woman as was Catherine, sensitive, intelligent, and in her
beauty so appealing, should be tied to such a being as was Charles
Nagle--poor Charles, whom every one, excepting his wife and one loyal
kinsman, called mad. And yet now it was for this very Charles that
Catherine asked him to stay, for the sake of that unhappy, distraught
man to whom he, James Mottram, recognized the duty of a brother.

"We will both forget what you have just told me," she said gently, and
he bowed his head in reverence.

They were now on the last step of the stone stairway leading to the
terrace.

Mrs. Nagle turned to her companion; he saw that her eyes were very
bright, and that the