carry out whatever directions I may have to give, Miss Verinder asks
leave to assist me, by personally superintending the restoration of her
own sitting-room. She only waits a word of reply from me to make the
journey to Yorkshire, and to be present as one of the witnesses on the
night when the opium is tried for the second time.

Here, again, there is a motive under the surface; and, here again, I
fancy that I can find it out.

What she has forbidden me to tell Mr. Franklin Blake, she is (as I
interpret it) eager to tell him with her own lips, BEFORE he is put
to the test which is to vindicate his character in the eyes of other
people. I understand and admire this generous anxiety to acquit him,
without waiting until his innocence may, or may not, be proved. It
is the atonement that she is longing to make, poor girl, after having
innocently and inevitably wronged him. But the thing cannot be done. I
have no sort of doubt that the agitation which a meeting between them
would produce on both sides--reviving dormant feelings, appealing to old
memories, awakening new hopes--would, in their effect on the mind of Mr.
Blake, be almost certainly fatal to the success of our experiment. It is
hard enough, as things are, to reproduce in him the conditions as they
existed, or nearly as they existed, last year. With new interests and
new emotions to agitate him, the attempt would be simply useless.

And yet, knowing this, I cannot find it in my heart to disappoint her. I
must try if I can discover some new arrangement, before post-time, which
will allow me to say Yes to Miss Verinder, without damage to the service
which I have bound myself to render to Mr. Franklin Blake.

Two o'clock.--I have just returned from my round of medical visits;
having begun, of course, by calling at the hotel.

Mr. Blake's report of the night is the same as before. He has had some
intervals of broken sleep, and no more. But he feels it less to-day,
having slept after yesterday's dinner. This after-dinner sleep is the
result, no doubt, of the ride which I advised him to take. I fear I
shall have to curtail his restorative exercise in the fresh air. He must
not be too well; he must not be too ill. It is a case (as a sailor would
say) of very fine steering.

He has not heard yet from Mr. Bruff. I found him eager to know if I had
received any answer from Miss Verinder.

I told him exactly what I was permitted to tell, and no more. It was
quite needl