“It was he that knocked me down in the dark that night then, Euphra.”

“Did he?  Oh!  I shall have to tell you all. —­ That wretch has a terrible power over me.  I loved him once.  But I refused to take the ring from your desk, because I knew it would get you into trouble.  He threw me into a somnambulic sleep, and sent me for the ring.  But I should have remembered if I had taken yours.  Even in my sleep, I don’t think he could have made me do that.  You may know I speak the truth, when I am telling my own disgrace.  He promised to set me free if I would get the ring; but he has not done it; and he will not.”

Sobs again interrupted her.

“I was afraid your ring was gone.  I don’t know why I thought so, except that you hadn’t it on, when you came to see me.  Or perhaps it was because I am sometimes forced to think what that wretch is thinking.  He made me go to him that night you saw me, Hugh.  But I was so ill, I don’t think I should have been able, but that I could not rest till I had asked him about your ring.  He said he knew nothing about it.”

“I am sure be has it,” said Hugh.  And he related to Euphra the struggle he had had with Funkelstein and its result.  She shuddered.

“I have been a devil to you, Hugh; I have betrayed you to him.  You will never see your ring again.  Here, take mine.  It is not so good as yours, but for the sake of the old way you thought of me, take it.”

“No, no, Euphra; Mr. Arnold would miss it.  Besides, you know it would not be my father’s ring, and it was not for the value of the diamond I cared most about it.  And I am not sure that I shall not find it again.  I am going up to London, where I shall fall in with him, I hope.”

“But do take care of yourself.  He has no conscience.  God knows, I have had little, but he has none.”

“I know he has none; but a conscience is not a bad auxiliary, and there I shall have some advantage of him.  But what could he want that ring of Lady Euphrasia’s for?”

“I don’t know.  He never told me.”

“It was not worth much.”

“Next to nothing.”

“I shall be surer to find that than my own.  And I will find it, if I can, that Mr. Arnold may believe I was not to blame.”

“Do.  But be careful.”

“Don’t fear.  I will be careful.”

She held out her hand, as if to take leave of him, but withdrew it again with the sudden cry: 

“What shall I do?  I thought he had left me to myself, till that night in the library.”

She held down her head in silence.  Then she said, slowly, in a tone of agony: 

“I am a slave, body and soul. —­ Hugh!” she added, passionately, and looking up in his face, “do you think there is a God?”

Her eyes glimmered with the faint reflex from gathered tears, that silently overflowed.

And now Hugh’s own poverty struck him with grief and humiliation.  Here was a soul seeking God, and he had no right to say that there was a God, for he knew nothing about him.  He had been told so; but what could that far-off witness do for the need of a desolate heart?  She had been told so a million of times.  He could not say that he knew it.  That was what she wanted and needed.