'Again his importunity overcame me,' continued Eustace, 'and for a time I deferred coming to England, and went instead with him to a country, many scenes in which were familiar to me, all my early education having been in Germany. Fascinated with old associations, I wandered about from place to place, as memory led me, feeling a happier nearness to my father there than I did when standing beside his grave. One day the fall of an old house in Dusseldorf, to which I had for a short time returned, induced me, with many passers-by, to assist in examining the ruins, lest any unfortunates should have been buried under them. Here I met with an accident, and was too much injured to speak. As a stranger, I was carried to the nearest hotel, I may call it. As soon as I could give an account of myself, my friend the doctor was sent for, and by his advice I was not moved to his house, but remained there under his care. Hearing that a pious Lutheran minister was visiting a sick woman in the same house, I requested to see him. In the course of conversation he told me he wished he could understand and speak English well, for the poor woman he was visiting, he said, was much restrained by feeling him to be foreign, and his words had less weight with her than they thought they otherwise would. "She is much troubled in mind," he said, "and I would thankfully give her relief."
'I immediately offered, as soon as I should be sufficiently recovered, to visit her for him; and I did so. I saw she had not very long to live, and had a burdened conscience; but I little suspected what she was about to confide to me. She had been nurse in the family of Sir Valary, having previously lived for many years with Sir Eustace. She revealed to me the whole of Bloodworth's villainy, in which she was deeply implicated, and gave me all the history of his contrivance to keep her away—of what she had suffered in banishment and in leaving Lady De la Mark and her infant—in fact, she left nothing untold, her great anxiety being to know if there were any pardon for sin like hers. She seemed reckless of exposure, and declared that if she lived she would willingly receive any punishment, provided she might have a hope of mercy hereafter. Her gratitude, when I disclosed to her who I was, was beyond bounds. She said she thought that having been permitted to restore me to my rights in so strange a manner was almost like a merciful assurance that there was pardon for her.'
OLD BET REVEALS THE WHOLE OF BLOODWORTH'S VILLAINY.
'Poor old Bet!' said the squire; 'I don't know what she did, but I'll answer for it, Bloodworth put her up to it.'
'And what was it?' said the doctor, breathless with interest.
'That I cannot divulge just now, and it is equally necessary that Bloodworth knows nothing of me until I convict him.'
'Let us go to-night,' said the squire.
'Too late, too late now!' said the doctor, shaking his head. 'Will you let me ask Mr. De la Mark'—