shall be heard. Ah! Jenny, you don't
care for me as you used, or you wouldn't keep me out here like this!"

"Oh, what shall I do?" sobbed Jane. "I can't do as he asks, and he
knows it; and yet he's trying to break my heart, he is!"

"Now, then, are you going to listen to me, Jenny?" whispered Gurdon,
imploringly.

"Oh, I can't--I can't: I daren't do it!" sobbed poor Jane.

"Oh, please, if you love me, don't drive me to desperation!" cried
Gurdon. "I--"

"Hush!" whispered Jane, in affrighted tones, for at that moment there
was a loud knocking at her bedroom door, and the voice of Mrs Elstree
was heard.

"Jane--Jane! Quick! Call Sir Murray! My darling is dying!"

Book 1, Chapter XVIII.

BENEATH THE SHADOW.

As, muttering a savage oath, John Gurdon crept through the yielding
shrubs, Jane Barker softly closed the window, and then glided to the
door.

"Not gone to bed?" exclaimed Mrs Elstree. "Thank Heaven! Rouse Sir
Murray and my husband while I run back."

"Have you called Dr Challen, ma'am?" said Jane, in agitated tones.

"Oh yes: he is in the bedroom," sobbed Mrs Elstree; and she hurried
back.

In a few minutes husband and father were by the bedside, watching with
agitated countenances the struggle going on, for truly it seemed that
the long lethargy into which Lady Gernon had been plunged was to be
terminated by the triumph of the dread shade. As Mrs Elstree had sat
watching her, she had suddenly started up to talk in a wild, incoherent
manner; and as Sir Murray Gernon stood there in his long dressing-gown,
with brow knit, a shade that was not one of sorrow crossed his brow upon
hearing some of his stricken wife's babblings.

"Philip," she said--and as she spoke her voice softened, and there was a
yearning look of gentleness in her countenance--"Philip, the cross:
where is the cross? Have you hid it?--have you taken it away? Pray,
pray restore it! He will be angry. They are favourite old jewels, that
I wear for his sake. You loved me once; for the sake of the old times
give it me back! He will ask for it. Where is the cross? Do you see:
blue sapphires, each like a little forget-me-not peering up at you.
Your flowers--true blue, Philip. But the cross--I must have the cross!"

She was silent for a few minutes, and then, wildly turning to her
husband, she caught his hand in hers.

"Philip," she cried, addressing him, "it is all madness--something of
the past. It was not to be, and