“What do you expect for that, doctor?” said the admiral.

“There is nothing,” said Henry, “that I could relate at all, that I should shrink from relating to Admiral Bell.”

“Well, my boy,” said the admiral, “and all I can reply to that is, you are quite right; for there can be nothing that you need shrink from telling me, so far as regards the fact of trusting me with it goes.”

“I am assured of that.”

“A British officer, once pledging his word, prefers death to breaking it.  Whatever you wish kept secret in the communication you make to me, say so, and it will never pass my lips.”

“Why, sir, the fact is,” said Henry, “that what I am about to relate to you consists not so much of secrets as of matters which would be painful to my feelings to talk of more than may be absolutely required.”

“I understand you.”

“Let me, for a moment,” said Mr Chillingworth, “put myself right.  I do not suspect, Mr. Henry Bannerworth, that you fancy I ask you to make a recital of circumstances which must be painful to you from any idle motive.  But let me declare that I have now a stronger impulse, which induces me to wish to hear from your own lips those matters which popular rumour may have greatly exaggerated or vitiated.”

“It is scarcely possible,” remarked Henry, sadly, “that popular rumour should exaggerate the facts.”

“Indeed!”

“No.  They are, unhappily, of themselves, in their bare truthfulness, so full of all that can be grievous to those who are in any way connected with them, that there needs no exaggeration to invest them with more terror, or with more of that sadness which must ever belong to a recollection of them in my mind.”

In suchlike discourse as this, the time was passed, until Henry Bannerworth and his friends once more reached the Hall, from which he, with his family, had so recently removed, in consequence of the fearful persecution to which they had been subjected.

They passed again into the garden which they all knew so well, and then Henry paused and looked around him with a deep sigh.

In answer to an inquiring glance from Mr. Chillingworth, he said,—­

“Is it not strange, now, that I should have only been away from here a space of time which may be counted by hours, and yet all seems changed.  I could almost fancy that years had elapsed since I had looked at it.”

“Oh,” remarked the doctor, “time is always by the imagination measured by the number of events which are crowded into a given space of it, and not by its actual duration.  Come into the house; there you will find all just as you left it, Henry, and you can tell us your story at leisure.”

“The air,” said Henry, “about here is fresh and pleasant.  Let us sit down in the summer-house yonder, and there I will tell you all.  It has a local interest, too, connected with the tale.”

This was agreed to, and, in a few moments, the admiral, Mr. Chillingworth, and Henry were seated in the same summer-house which had witnessed the strange interview between Sir Francis Varney and Flora Bannerworth, in which he had induced her to believe that he felt for the distress he had occasioned her, and was strongly impressed with the injustice of her sufferings.