When we remember what women are, the latter instance of obliviousness appears the more probable.

   I SHALL, I am sure, scarcely be credited when I say that Philippa's unconsciousness lasted for sixteen days. I had wished her to sleep so long that the memory of her deeds on the awful night should fade from her memory. She seemed likely to do so.

   All the time she slept I felt more and more secure, because the snow never ceased falling. It must have been thirty feet deep above all that was mortal of Sir Runan Errand. The deeper the better. The baronet was never missed by any one, curious to say. No inquiries were made; and this might have puzzled a person less unacquainted than myself with the manners of baronets and their friends.

   Sometimes an awful fascination led me along the road where I had found the broken, battered mass. I fancied I could see the very drift where the thing lay, and a dreary temptation (dating probably from the old times when I had some wild beasts in the exhibition) urged me to 'stir it up with a long pole.' I resisted it, and, bitterly weeping, I turned away towards Philippa's bedside.

   As I walked I met Mrs. Thompson.

   'Does she hate him?' she asked suddenly.

   'Forgiveness is a Christian virtue,' I answered evasively.

   I could not trust this woman.

   'Listen,' she said, 'and try to understand. If I thought she hated him, I would tell her something. If she thought you hated them, he would tell me something. If ye or you thought he hated her, I would tell him something. I will wait and see.'

   She left me to make the best (which was not much) of her enigmatical words.

   She was evidently a strange woman.

   I felt that she was mixed up in Sir Runan's early life, and that we were mixed up in Sir Runan's early death—in fact, that everything was very mixed indeed.

   She came back. 'Give me your name and college,' she said, 'not necessarily for publication,' and I divined that she had once been a proctor at Girton. I gave her my address at the public-house round the corner, and we parted, Mrs. Thompson whispering that she 'would write.'

   On reaching home I leaped to Philippa's apartment.

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