my memory if you can help it. If I could only be on the
spot to clear up the mystery; for there is a mystery about the cheque.
But I have sworn never to cross the threshold of Gladwyn again until this
insult is wiped out and Giles believes in my innocence. If we never meet
again, my sweet sister, you will know I loved you as well as I could love
anything; but I was never good and unselfish like you. And I fear--I
greatly fear--that I shall never weather through this." That was all.
The letter ended abruptly.

'The following afternoon a messenger from the Ship asked to see Mr.
Hamilton; and after Giles had been closeted with him for a few minutes he
came out, looking white and scared, with Eric's watch and scarf in his
hands. The man had told him the young gentleman had gone out and had not
returned, and they had been found on the beach, at the extreme end of
Hove, and they feared something had happened to him. He had ordered
dinner at a certain time, but he had not made his appearance. The next
morning they had heard reports in the town that caused them to institute
inquiries. A letter in the pocket of the coat, directed to Eric Hamilton,
Gladwyn, Heathfield, enabled them to communicate with his relatives. And
they had lost no time in doing so. I never saw Giles so terribly upset.
He looked as though he had received a blow. He went to Brighton at once,
and afterwards to London, and employed every means to set our fears at
rest, for a horrible suspicion that he had really made away with himself
was in all our minds.

'I was far too ill to notice all that went on. A fever seemed about me,
and I could not eat or sleep. I think I should have done neither, that my
poor brain must have given way under the shock of my apprehensions, but
for Mr. Cunliffe.

'He was a true friend,--a good Samaritan. He bound up my wounds and
poured in oil and wine of divinest charity. He did not believe that Eric
was guilty of either dishonesty or self-destruction. In his own mind he
was inclined to believe that he wished us to think him dead. It was all
a mystery; but we must wait and pray; and in time he managed to instil
a faint hope into my mind that this might be so.

'Etta was rather kind to me just then. She looked ill and worried, and
seemed taken up with Giles. It was well that he should have some one to
look after his comforts, for there was a breach between us that seemed as
though it would never be healed. I saw that he was irrita