His fingers closed over hers, still fumbling at the bar.

"I don't think I can do that," he said. "The doctor blames me for frightening you out of your life. He'd hold me responsible if I let you rush out of my house in the middle of the night like this. If you don't mind I'll ask you not to make me out a worse fool than I've been already. And—you aren't going to faint again, are you? Sit down a minute——"

His arm went round her quickly; he had unloosed her hands from the door, and put her into a chair by the fire, before she was sure that she had not fainted. She leant her whirling head against the packed red cushions.

"They gave me something to make me sleep...." she murmured.

He stood a little way off on the hearthrug, watching her. Kit, the terrier, lay down suddenly between them, as if it had him safe.

"How did you know me?" he said abruptly.

"There is a picture of you," she said; "and I—thought of you so often."

The man who had been dismissed so lightly from his world looked down with a queer expression. He could not doubt the utter unconsciousness in the tired young voice. She had nothing to hope for. She was being judged.

"In the name of Heaven, why——?" he burst out, checking himself too late for, the girl stood up and faced him, calling up all her courage.

"Because I am a shameless wretch," she cried unsteadily. "A liar and an impostor.... You don't ask a thief why he has robbed you. You send him to prison.... You don't laugh at him...."

"You child!" said Barnaby.

The strange, kind note in his voice broke down her desperation. Somehow, she found herself stammering out the story of her Southern childhood; the brave old family ruined by the war; the last of them dying, the last friend gone, and she left undefended, to fight for herself in the world. Not strong enough to nurse the sick, not hard enough to win her way in business; driven to try if she could live by her one poor gift of acting;—what could she do but catch at the happy-go-lucky kindness that had flung salvation to her?

"I could have died..." she said, scorning herself; "but I ... came."

"Hush!" said the man softly, all at once, turning round to meet interruption. The doctor was coming downstairs, deliberately, as became an all-wise and elderly dictator, peering short-sightedly into the hall below.

"Bless my soul!" he said. "Barnaby, you villain, she's not fit to be talking to you. I warned the servants it was as much as their lives were worth to let you go near her;—and look at this!"

He shook his head at them both, but relented, with his fingers on Susan's pulse. His professional knowledge of woman mitigated his surprise at her quick recovery. Some women could bear anything, after the first shock of pain or joy.

"Good," he said. "Since you're awake, and in your right mind, which I had hardly dared to hope for,—I'll send you up to Lady Henrietta. She has been calling for you. Just sit beside her, and tell her very quietly, over and over again, how Barnaby looks, and all that. I can't risk her seeing him yet;—her age isn't so elastic,—and nothing will satisfy her but you."

Instinctively the girl moved to obey, and stopped. Would Barnaby let her go to his mother? As far as she could understand—it was still stranger than a dream—he had not yet proclaimed her an impostor. But surely the time was come.

"Oh," said the doctor, following her look; "your husband must do without you."

And then Barnaby spoke.

"You're a bit hard on us, doctor," he said. "We had a lot to say to each other. But my wife and I can finish our talk to-morrow."—His voice, as he turned to her, lost its humorous note and became grave. "Go up to my mother,—please."

She went. The doctor watched her go, and, shaking off a certain perplexity, addressed himself to the younger man. Old friend of the family that he was, his gruff manner poorly hid his emotion.

"Good heavens, man!" he said. "I can't get accustomed to you. Shake hands again, will you? I want to feel positive you are not a spook."

"What about my mother?" asked Barnaby. He too had been watching the girl go slowly up the stairs.

"She'll be all right, if we can keep her quiet," said the doctor cheerfully. "But she can't afford to have any more shocks. Her heart is bad. You didn't know that, of course. She is a courageous lady, and has taken all your vagaries gallantly up to now, but this has been a bit too sudden. If it hadn't been for your wife's collapse distracting her attention for the moment, taking her mind off the greater shock——"

He broke off there.

"How the devil was I to know?" burst out the other man. "I had no notion that I was dead."

"Hadn't you heard——?"

"How should I? Look here, doctor, I haven't been sulking in civilization; racketing in cities. I've been roughing it, going up and down in the earth.—There wasn't much use in writing letters. I told my mother I would turn up again some day, and she wasn't to be surprised. I did send her a line, now and then, the last of them a greasy scrawl in a mining camp, where there was one bit of paper among the lot of us, and I won it. She can't have got that.... When I had worked the restlessness out of my blood—some fellows can't manage that, it takes them all their lives—I had a fancy to come home and walk into the old place as if I had never left it.... It's simple enough——!"

He was bending forward, stammering a little in his excitement. Suddenly he laughed.

"By George!" he said. "So that was why the porters fled from me at John o' Gaunt!"

The old man surveyed him anxiously, wiping his glasses.

Often one heard of men who, seized by a thirst for adventure in the rough, or unbalanced by passion and disappointment, had thrown up everything familiar and dropped out, to savour the hard realities of life. Sometimes they reappeared, sometimes only peculiar stories drifted to their old set about them, and those who might know were dumb. He felt a most irrational alarm, an impulse to hold fast to this prodigal.

"You'll not vanish again?" he said hastily. "You won't want to roam in search of adventures now you have a wife to take care of."

Barnaby stretched out for a cigarette and lit it. There had always been a box of them in one corner of the chimney-piece. It did not strike him as odd that he should find them there.

"Have a smoke, doctor," he said. "It'll steady your nerves a bit.... Yes, I'm sobered."

He halted a minute, and the terrier at his feet, remembering an old trick he had taught her, sprang up and blew out the match. As he stooped to caress her, she began licking him furiously. There had been some other trick, but she had forgotten that. She made a clumsy effort to keep his attention by crossing her paws and waving them, which was how it had begun....

"Good dog," he said, and she dropped at his feet, proud of her cleverness, though grudging his notice to the doctor.

"You're right there," he went on, as if the thought amused him. "A man is a fool to go tramping over the world, searching for adventures, when they come to him on his own hearth."

*****

Lady Henrietta lay propped high with pillows, talking fast.

"I want Susan!" she complained. "Bring me Susan. The doctor shan't put me off with his opiates. I can't trust any of you but Susan."

And the girl came faltering into the room.

Lady Henrietta caught her hand, nipping it tight in hers.

"Susan, my child," she said. "What a little cold hand you've got! They're hushing me as if I was a lunatic, humouring me with tales. And my heart's so funny. I can feel it misbehaving.... I'll die if they make me angry. Come here, closer. I want to ask you—you won't tell me comfortable lies.—Has Barnaby come back?"

"He has come back," said Susan.

"Are you deceiving me?" whispered Lady Henrietta. "Are you in league with the doctor?—I