’I thought so.  The breathing is certainly less difficult:  the inflammation is diminishing.  I see signs of improvement.’

‘Thank God!’ was my answer to this, and before long this hope was verified:  the pain and difficulty of breathing were certainly less intense, the danger was subsiding.

Mr. Hamilton went downstairs soon after this, and I settled to my solitary night-watch, but it was no longer dreary:  every hour I felt more assured that Susan Locke would be restored to her sister.

Once or twice during the night I crept into Phoebe’s room to gladden her heart with the glad news, but she was sleeping heavily and I would not disturb her.  ’Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning,’ I said to myself, as I sat down by Susan’s bedside.  I was very weary, but a strange tumult of thoughts seemed surging through my brain, and I was unable to control them.  Gladys’s pale face and tear-filled eyes rose perpetually before me:  her low, passionate tones vibrated in my ear.  ‘They have accused him falsely,’ I seemed to hear her say:  ’Eric never took that cheque.’

What a mystery in that quiet household!  No wonder there was something unrestful in the atmosphere of Gladwyn,—­that one felt oppressed and ill at ease in that house.

Fragments of my conversation with Mr. Hamilton came unbidden to my memory.  How strange that that proud, reserved man should have spoken so to me, that he had suffered his heart’s bitterness to overflow in words to me, who was almost a stranger:  ’They lay the blame of that poor boy’s death at my door, as though I would not give my right hand to have him back again.’  Oh, if Gladys had only heard the tone in which he said this, she must have believed and have been sorry for him.

‘They are too hard upon him,’ I said to myself.  ’If he has been stern and injudicious with his poor young brother, he has long ago repented of his hardness.  He is very good to them all, but they will not try to understand him:  it is not right of Gladys to treat him as a stranger.  I am sorry for them all, but I begin to feel that Mr. Hamilton is not the only one to blame.’

I wished I could have told him this, but I knew the words would never get themselves spoken.  I might be sorry for him in my heart, but I could never tell him so, never assure him of my true sympathy.  I was far too much in awe of him:  there are some men one would never venture to pity.

But all the same I longed to do him some secret service; he had been kind to me, and had helped me much in my work.  If I could only succeed in bringing him and Gladys nearer together, if I could make them understand each other, I felt I would have spared no pains or trouble to do so.

If he were not so infatuated on the subject of his cousin’s merits, I thought scornfully, I should be no more sanguine about my success; but Miss Darrell had hoodwinked him completely.  As long as he believed in all she chose to tell him, Gladys would never be in her proper place.