to bear. God forgive
me that it should have been so! Oh, I can breathe freely now again,
that I know I am not suspected by you."

"By you?" Tom could not but see what, after all, no human being can
conceal, that Grace cared for him. And the devil came and tempted
him once more: but this time it was in vain. Tom's better angel had
returned; Grace's tender guilelessness, which would with too many men
only have marked her out as the easier prey, was to him as a sacred
shield before her innocence. So noble, so enthusiastic, so pure! He
could not play the villain with that woman.

But there was plainly a mystery. What were the burdens, heavier even
than unjust suspicion, of which she had spoken? There was no harm in
asking.

"But, Grace--Miss Harvey--You will not be angry with me if I ask?--Why
speak so often, as if finding this money depended on you alone? You
wish me to recover it, I know; and if you can counsel me, why not do
so? Why not tell me whom you suspect?"

Her old wild terror returned in an instant. She stopped short--

"Suspect? I suspect? Oh, I have suspected too many already! Suspected
till I began to hate my fellow-creatures--hate life itself, when I
fancied that I saw 'thief' written on every forehead. Oh, do not ask
me to suspect any more!"

Tom was silent.

"Oh," she cried, after a moment's pause. "Oh, that we were back in
those old times I have read of, when they used to put people to the
torture to make them confess!"

"Why, in Heaven's name?"

"Because then I should have been tortured, and have confessed it, true
or false, in the agony, and have been hanged. They used to hang them
then, and put them out of their misery; and I should have been put out
of mine, and no one have been blamed but me for ever more."

"You forget," said Tom, lost in wonder, "that then I should have
blamed you, as well as every one else."

"True; yes, it was a foolish faithless word. I did not take it, and it
would have been no good to my soul to say I did. Lies cannot prosper,
cannot prosper, Mr. Thurnall!" and she stopped short again.

"What, my dear Grace?" said he, kindly enough; for he began to fear
that she was losing her wits.

"I saved your life!"

"You did, Grace."

"Then, I never thought to ask for payment; but, oh, I must now. Will
you promise me one thing in return?"

"What you will, as I am a man and a gentleman; I can trust you to ask
nothing which is not worthy of you."

Tom spoke truth. He