understand that."

"I am a friend of Dr. Just," I repeated, "because it happens that I am very much in his power, and I must be his friend if I would live at all. If that is your case, too, surely we might form some small conspiracy together against him. You're not fond of the man?" I hazarded.

She shook her head. "I hate him—and I'm afraid of him," she said vehemently. "And yet I have to look to him for everything in the world."

"Sit down, and tell me about it," I said; and I drew her into the summer-house, and sat by her side while she talked to me. She was like a child in the ease with which she gave me her confidence; and as I listened to her, years seemed to separate me from my prison and from the life I had led. For this was the first gentle soul with whom I had yet come in contact.

"You must first tell me," she urged, "why you are in the doctor's power. Who are you? and what have you done, that he should be able to hold you in his hands? You are a man; you're not a weak girl."

It was difficult to answer her. "Well," I began, after a pause, "I did something, a long time ago, of which the doctor knows; and he holds that knowledge over me. That's all I can tell you."

She looked straight into my eyes, and I found, to my relief, that I was able to look at her with some frankness in return. "I don't believe it was anything very wrong," she said at last.

"Thank you," I answered, and I prayed that she might never know what my sin had been.

"You see," she went on confidentially, while the shadows grew about us; "I am really all alone in the world, except for Dr. Just, who is my guardian. He was made my guardian by my poor, dear father, who died some two years ago; my father believed in the doctor very much. They had written a scientific treatise together—because the doctor is very clever, and father quite looked up to him. So when he died he left directions that I was to be taken care of by the doctor. That was two years ago, and I have lived in this house ever since, with one short interval."

"And the interval?" I asked.

"We went down to a country house belonging to the doctor—a place in Essex, called Green Barn. It's a gloomy old house—worse than this one; the doctor goes there to shoot."

"But you haven't told me yet why you were 

 Prev. P 30/215 next