e to go back to her patients, and then it
would be too late.

"I think I never told you," he began, "how Mr. Edmonson's portrait, my
great-grandfather's, came into that hiding-place? Would you care to
hear?"

"Very much, if it is not too much family history for you to tell me."

He smiled. "I must begin a good way back, as far as with my
grandfather's youth," he said. "I am afraid it was a wild one. He was
handsome, and gay, and rich, well-born, too, though not of the
Sunderland Archdales, as I had always supposed. He must have said this
when he took his own name again after his year of hiding as a criminal
from justice. But I don't think that he ever meant crime; it was an
irregular duel. I think his adversary's first shot hit him in the
shoulder, and at the second, for they were to fire twice, he rushed up
to his opponent in a fury of pain, perhaps, and fired at close range.
The man fell dead. I don't know how they tell the story in Portsmouth,
but it's not worse than that, I suppose."

"It's something like that, I think," she said.

"Pleasant to go back where we've always been so,--well, so esteemed; I
mean that the name has been. But I may not go back," he added.

She made no answer for a moment; then she said, "Captain Edmonson is
like that."

"But worse," he answered.

"Yes, worse."

"Is his wound doing well?" questioned Archdale.

"It is healing, but very slowly."

"Next time he will not fail of his mark," said the young man.

"Perhaps the next time his mark will be the enemy," she answered. "He
has had time to think." Her companion gave an eager glance. "Is she
teaching him something?" he wondered. "What?" How could she teach him
not to care for her? His pulses quickened. He altered his position a
little, which brought him by so much nearer. "But tell me about the
portrait," said Elizabeth.

Archdale told the story, the outlines of which Elizabeth had given to
Mrs. Eveleigh. But he told it with so many details that it seemed new
to her. "Edmonson insists that the nobleman killed in this duel was a
distant relative of Sir Temple Dacre," he said, as he finished the
account of the flight and the taking of the portrait.

He told of its careful concealment afterwards lest it should identify
them, and how, when the daughter's eyes rested upon it, she had a dread
of discovery, that amounted almost to a sense of guilt.

"Poor woman!" said Elizabeth, "with the loss of her father and her
child, she cou