running away from him," I reminded her.

She bent her head, so that I could not see her face. "Lately," she said in a low voice, "his manner to me has changed. At first he was courteous and kind—he treated me as though I had been his daughter. But now it's all different; he looks at me in a fashion I understand—and yet don't understand. To-day he tried to put his arm round me, and to kiss me; then when I ran away he ran after me."

I felt that I hated the doctor very cordially; I had an insane desire to be present if by any chance he should repeat his conduct. I felt my muscles stiffen as I looked at the girl; in my thoughts I was like some knight of old, ready to do doughty deeds for this fair, pretty girl, who was so ready to confide in me. I forgot all about who I was, or what had happened to me; I had only strangely come out into the world again—into a world of love.

But the fact that it was a world of love reminded me that I had had a rival—another man who had held her hands and looked into her eyes, and pleaded that he might help her. I could not, of course, ask about him, because I held the key to his fate, and that fate intimately concerned my own safety; but I was consumed with curiosity, nevertheless. Strangely enough, she voiced my thoughts by beginning to speak of him.

"There is something else that troubles me," she said earnestly. "I have one friend—a dear, good, loyal fellow; but he has unaccountably gone away, and I can hear nothing of him."

I felt myself turning hot and cold; I blessed the darkness of the summer-house. "What was his name?" I asked.

"Gregory Pennington," she answered softly.

"He was my friend before my father died; he followed me here when the doctor took charge of me. He was afraid of the doctor—not for himself, but on my account; he had a strange idea, and one that I have tried to laugh at, that the doctor wanted to kill me."

She looked at me with smiling eyes, laughing at such a suggestion; but I, remembering the earnestness of Gregory Pennington's words to the girl on that first occasion of my coming to the house, seemed now to hear that warning as though it came indeed from the dead. And I could not answer her.

"That was foolish, wasn't it?" she said, with a little laugh. "But then, I think poor Gregory loves me, and that made him afraid for me. You have been in the house here for some days; 

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