"Will you tell Miss Willoughby?" whispered Claud.
He shook his head.
"Let Mr. Fowler tell her," he replied, gently.
"You have not answered my question—do you believe in her innocence?" said Miss Ellen, appealing to all three.
"We know she is innocent, dear Miss Ellen. Mr. Percivale has proved it."
It was too much; she uttered a cry, and, at the cry, Elsa started from sleep, and sat upright, pushing back her cloudy hair, and in speechless bewilderment at finding herself in her aunt's room, still half dressed, and in presence of three gentlemen. The lovely crimson flooded her face as she tried to collect her thoughts, and to rise.
A scene of some confusion ensued.
Miss Ellen, in her agitation, was trying to ask for an explanation, with her voice dissolved in tears. Elsa, springing from the bed, moved towards her, still half-awake, vaguely troubled—foreseeing some fresh catastrophe; and then Mr. Fowler caught her in his arms, kissing her and somewhat incoherently imploring her to forgive him, while Percivale stood at a little distance, speaking only with his eyes. And those eyes set the girl's heart throbbing and raised a wild tumult in her. So by degrees everything was explained, nobody exactly knew how; but, in the course of half-an-hour, Elsa knew that she was saved, and that she owed her salvation solely to him who stood before her, with his head lowered, and the lamplight gilding the soft, downy, curling mass of his hair. They did not stay long. It was he who hurried them away, that they might not break in too far on the girl's rest.
Miss Willoughby could hardly let him go. Something about this young man's whole appearance and manner appealed wonderfully to her sympathies. She held his hand long in hers, looking at him with eyes swimming in grateful tears.
"You know," he said, with a smile, "you will insist on so greatly exaggerating what I have done; it was quite simple and obvious; I merely set on foot an investigation."