asked.

It was Anne who answered, for Bertha was struggling with a desire to laugh or to cry, it did not seem to matter which, so long as she could make a noise or a fuss over something.

“Oh, Bertha never does very much; she has not begun to take life very seriously yet, you see. But she walked to Paston to-day to help Hilda carry some music, and I expect the extra exertion has knocked her up a little.”

Bertha clenched her hands so tightly that the nails entered into the flesh. A little extra exertion—what a joke it was! She wondered what Anne would have said to have seen the struggle to reach the Shark’s Teeth, with the rope that was to save the life of a man. A little extra exertion, indeed! Well, it was quite true it was extra, and then the funny thing was that she suddenly seemed to be in the water again, and doing battle for her own life and for the life of the man whom she was trying so hard to save. She seemed to be crying and laughing all in a breath, then there was more confusion, the sound of many waters in her ears; and then she came to herself to find that Mr. Mortimer was holding her in his arms at the open door, while Anne bent over her with a face full of concern.

“Bertha, darling, what is the matter? Are you ill, dear? You have given us such a shock!” cried Anne, whose eyes were swimming in tears.

Somehow it was the sight of the tears which helped Bertha to rally her flagging powers, and to keep from slipping back into that gulf from which she had but just emerged. It was so rarely that Anne showed any sign of tears, and surely it must be something very much out of the common to induce them.

“Oh, I am all right,” said Bertha slowly. “I was tired, you know, and I was so afraid that I should not have supper ready in time for you.”

A cloud crept over the face of Anne. To her there seemed no reason why Bertha should have been overdone by the walk to Paston and back, while supper had not called for very active preparation. But Bertha always took so long to do the simplest thing, and even then the doing was mostly unsatisfactory.

“She looks clean worn out; I should put her to bed,” said the visitor, with such a clear understanding of just how Bertha felt, that she blessed him in her heart and wondered that he should be so wise.

“Yes, I should like to go to bed,” she murmured faintly, and then suddenly remembering all those new resolutions that she had made, she said hurriedly, as she tried to free herself from the arms which held her, “But I will wait and wash the supper dishes first, for Anne must be so tired with working all day.”

There was a note of derisive laughter from the man, but which was promptly checked as Anne exclaimed, in very real concern, “Oh, I am sure that she is ill, poor darling, because she does not trouble about the supper dishes as a rule!”

“Wait until the morning before making up your mind that she is bad,” said Roger Mortimer. “She may be quite all right when she has had a night of sleep. I will carry her to her room now, then you can put her to bed, and afterwards we will wash up the supper dishes together, you and I; it will be like old times.”

Bertha was drifting again, but she roused at this speech to make quite a vigorous protest—she could not, and would not, be carried to her room by this man, who was a stranger, or almost a stranger. The thought of the awful muddle—the unmade bed and the wild disorder which reigned there—seemed to give her a momentary spurt of strength. She must walk to her bed on her own feet—she must, she must!

But Anne broke in upon her gasping, half-incoherent protests with a quick word of common sense. “Bring her into my room, please. I must have her with me to-night, and mine is the only double bed in the house.”

Bertha dropped quiet with a sigh of relief. If there was no danger of her room being seen, she would just as soon be carried as walk, for her limbs seemed to have lost all power, and she felt quite stupid.

Mr. Mortimer carried her into Anne’s room, which was just a picture of neatness, and laid her on the bed. But Bertha would not let Anne stay for any work of undressing, declaring that as she was so tired, it was too much trouble to take her clothes off yet awhile.

Perhaps Anne did not require much persuading, for sounds from the outer room seemed to point to the fact of the visitor being engaged in very active clearing of the supper table. But she left the door ajar, and Bertha lay for a time in a state of dreamy content, listening to the voices in the next room.

Presently she drifted into slumber, and she must have been sleeping for some time, for the room was quite dark when she awoke, while a gleam of lamplight showed faintly from the room beyond. It was the sound of voices that roused her, a woman’s tones, eager and agitated, while Anne’s voice replied in surprised, almost unbelieving, query.

“But, Mrs. Saunders, Bertha did not say anything about it, and she cannot swim very much, certainly not well enough to take the risk of swimming out to the Shark’s Teeth with a rope in a sea like this, for there has been a heavy swell on all day from the storm of yesterday.”

“Well, Miss Doyne, she did it—as true as I am sitting here, she did it—and we towed the boat ashore with the gentleman in it, though I’m sorry to say the boat fouled the rocks just as we were drawing her inshore, and he got a nasty knock on the head which, he said, made him feel downright stupid. But he was so upset because your sister went away without his having so much as a chance to say thank you to her, so I said that I would just come along and see how she was after getting such a chill and a wetting, for the water is real cold to-day,” replied the voice of Mrs. Saunders in very real concern.

“Then, of course, it was the shock and the excitement which upset her and gave us such a bad scare at supper, when she was first hysterical and then fainted,” said Anne. “I was afraid that she was going to have a bad illness, poor child!”

The voice of Mrs. Saunders took a lower key, and presently Bertha fell asleep again.

It was later still when she roused once more, to find this time that Anne was kneeling beside the bed sobbing, and sobbing in a fashion more stormy than Bertha had ever heard before.

“What is the matter, Anne?” asked Bertha in alarm, in that first moment of confused awakening. She had forgotten all about her brave deed of the afternoon, and only wondered why it was that every bone in her body seemed to be aching with a separate and individual pain.

“My darling, my baby, why did you not tell me how brave you had been, and how you had saved that poor man’s life?” cried Anne, with so much keen reproach in her tone that Bertha was roused to fresh wonder, though the pain of her limbs demanded so much in the way of endurance, that she had little attention to bestow on anything else.

“Mr. Mortimer was here—I could not tell you in front of him; besides, it would not have made any difference,” replied Bertha languidly, not liking to admit that she would hardly have screwed her courage to the pitch necessary to the telling, even if Anne had been alone.

“It would have made a difference—it would have made all the difference!” cried Anne sharply, and her arms, which were round Bertha, tightened their clasp.

“How?” There was a dreamy wonder in Bertha’s tone, but she was so tired, and her limbs ached so badly, that she was only about half-conscious of what was going on, or what Anne