"It is a melancholy satisfaction to have my opinion confirmed," he said.
"Miss Henson, if you will get Williams to see me as far as the
lodge-gates ... it is so late that--er--"

Williams came at length, and the little doctor departed. Enid fairly
cowered before the blazing, searching look that Bell turned upon her. She
fell to plucking the bedclothes nervously.

"What does it mean?" he asked, hoarsely. "What fiend's plaything are you
meddling with? Don't you know that if that girl dies it will be murder?
It was only for your sake that I didn't speak my mind before the fool who
has just gone. He has seen murder done under his eyes for days, and he is
ready to give a certificate of the cause of death. And the strange thing
is that in the ordinary way he would be quite justified in doing so."

"Chris is not going to die; at least, not in that way," Enid
whispered, hoarsely.

"Then leave her alone. No more drugs; no medicine even. Give Nature a
chance. Thank Heaven, the girl has a perfect constitution."

"Chris is not going to die," Enid repeated, doggedly, "but the
certificate will be given, all the same. Oh, Hatherly, you must trust
me--trust me as you have never done before. Look at me, study me. Did you
ever know me to do a mean or dishonourable thing?"

They were down in the drawing-room again; David waiting, with a strange
sense of embarrassment under Margaret Henson's distant eyes; indeed, it
was probable that she had never noticed him at all. All the same she