t was not difficult to guess the
remainder of the story from the child's disjointed words: she struggled
not to blame her cousin. Georgy, on reaching the brow of the precipice,
had amused herself by throwing stones down the ravine, that she might
enjoy their rumble and clatter. When this too mild pleasure shortly
palled upon her, she tried to induce Beppo, the delicate Italian
greyhound, to go down, and finally, vexed with him for not seeking such
a form of suicide, she flung him over--half in sport perhaps, for
Georgy's pastimes were sometimes rather savage. He regained his footing
before he was swallowed up in the abyss, and stood on the little shelf
of rock thirty feet below, whining at first in entreaty, then howling in
such abject terror that Helen, broken-hearted at such misery, slid
fearlessly after him, but found herself unable to retrace her steps.

"Did not Georgy try to help you?" I asked.

"I don't think she did," answered Helen, fixing her great eyes upon me.
"She kept calling to me at first not to be a coward and to come back.
Then she ran away, and I did not see her any more until--"

"How many times did you call me?" I asked.

"I don't know. I seemed to know you would come, but I felt afraid I
could not hold on any longer. Just when I was tired out I heard you
coming."

I had some stirrings of curiosity about my own fate.

"Did you send the people after me?"

"When I saw you going down," said she, growing pale even to her lips, "I
could not move at first. I was not sure what I ought to do. Then I
remembered, and ran as fast as I could to papa. I forget what came
afterward. I remember that grandpa was holding me in his arms and crying
very much, and that papa and Mills and all the men were bringing you
across the lawn."

"Don't tell me any more," said I quickly: "I can't quite bear it."

It was late in April when I finally went back to Belfield, and even by
that time I was so far from possessing strength or health that not only
Mr. Floyd accompanied me, but Dr. Sharpe and Mills as well. Jack Holt
and Harry Dart and Tony Thorpe came about me at once: all the good
people of Belfield thronged to bring me something--words of comfort and
cheer, jellies, Easter lilies, cakes and oranges--but the one I had most
longed to see did not come. Once more at home, I grew stronger both in
body and mind: the spring-time did me good, although welling up within
me all the time, so imperiously, so irresistibly, th