'Yes.'

'God forgive me!' she said brokenly, while her eyes grew dark and soft with sorrow and shame; then drawing her hand from mine, she crept with noiseless feet out of the room.

I remained in the study for some time, a prey to the most violent excitement, in which the emotions of grief and remorse struggled vainly against the intoxicating belief that Babiole loved me. I strode up and down what little space there was in the room, until the four walls could contain me no longer. Then for an hour I wandered about the forest, climbed up to the top of a rock which overlooked the Dee and the Braemar road, and came back in the moonlight by the shell of old Knock Castle, from which, three hundred years ago, James Gordon went forth to fight for his kinsman and neighbour, the Baron of Braickley, and fell by his side in one of the fierce and purposeless skirmishes which seem to have been the only occupation worth mentioning of the Highland gentlemen of those times. When I returned home I saw Babiole's shadow through the blind of the little room where her husband's body was lying. It was long past my dinner hour, and I was so brutishly hungry that I felt thankful that neither of the unhappy ladies was present to be disgusted with my mountain appetite. I had scarcely risen from table when Ferguson informed me that Mrs. Ellmer had sent Tim to beg me to come to the cottage to see her husband, who she feared was dying. Remembering the poor wretch's ghastly and haggard appearance when we found him, I was not surprised; nor could I, knowing the fate that might be in store for him if he lived, be sorry that his miserable life would in all probability end peacefully now.

I found him lying in bed in one of the upper rooms of the cottage with his wife standing by his side. His eyes were feverishly bright, and the hand he let me take felt dry and withered. He said nothing when I asked him how he was, but stared at me intently while his wife spoke.

'He wanted to see you, Mr. Maude, just while he felt a little better and able to speak,' said she, 'to tell you how sorry he is for the foolish and dreadful thoughts he had about you, when he did not know the true state of the case, and when his head was rather dizzy because he had lived somewhat carelessly, you know.'

Poor little woman! it was to her all my sympathy went, to this brave, energetic, fragile creature whose worst faults were on the surface, and who, to this bitter shameful end, valiantly worked with her busy skilful hands, and made the best of everything. She looked so worn that all the good her late easy life had done her seemed to have disappeared; and from shame at her husband's conduct, though her voice remained bright and shrill, she did not dare to meet my eyes. I went round to her, and held one of her thin workworn hands as I spoke to her husband.

'And you've persuaded him that I'm not an ogre after all,' I said cheerfully.

Mr. Ellmer, after one or two vain attempts to answer, got back voice enough to whisper huskily, with a dogged expression of face—

'She says I was wrong—that if Babiole was unhappy, it was the fault of—the other one. Well, if I was wrong then, I'm right now. You'll marry her?'

'Yes.'