Dacia\'s first words to Burgo were: "Have you burnt my scrawl?"

"I have."

"That is well. Seeing that one can\'t foretell what may happen from day to day, and that what I wrote was intended for your eyes alone, it was better it should be burnt. And now tell me, have you devised any plan of escape?"

"After turning over in my mind some half-dozen more or less impracticable schemes, I can only think of one which seems to hold out a tolerable prospect of success."

"And that is----?"

"To file through the two bars which guard the window of my prison, force out the glass-work, and then by means of a rope lower myself to the ground outside."

"An admirable scheme, and I see no reason why it should not succeed. Tell me, in what way can I help you to carry it out?"

"By procuring for me a couple of files and a sufficient length of rope."

"I will drive to Oakbarrow to-morrow and obtain them, after which they shall be conveyed to you either by Mrs. Sprowle or myself."

"How can I ever thank you sufficiently?"

"Your success--and you will not fail, I feel assured--will far more than repay me. But to file through the bars will be a matter of time, will it not?"

"It will; probably a matter of three or four days, but I can\'t speak positively. I don\'t think I have mentioned before that now and then Signor Sperani takes it into his head to pay me a stealthy visit in the middle of the night, probably with the view of satisfying himself that I am not engaged in any nefarious attempt to escape."

"I can well believe it. From what I have seen of him he seems to me to abound with underhand ways, and to distrust every one. He is one of those men who regard their own shadow with suspicion. But so far, Mr. Brabazon, I am altogether in the dark (and should you have any reason for wishing me to remain in it, pray don\'t hesitate a moment to tell me so), and utterly fail to understand how it happens that you, a nephew of Sir Everard Clinton, should have been assaulted as you were in your uncle\'s grounds, and be here a prisoner under your uncle\'s roof. I may tell you that I am indebted to Mrs. Sprowle for my knowledge of the relationship between you and Sir Everard. Doubtless it had come to her from her son, but in what way the latter learnt it I have no means of knowing."

"It will afford me very great pleasure, Miss Roylance," replied Burgo, "to explain in the fewest possible words what, doubtless, does seem to you a most inexplicable state of affairs."

He took a turn or two in silence, as if revolving in his mind in what terms he could best begin that which he wanted to say.

Dacia followed him with her eyes--those wonderful blue-gray eyes, which by some lights, when half veiled by their dark lashes, seemed almost black, and could, when she so willed, look as cold and fathomless as a mountain tarn. Just now, however, they shone with the light of eager expectancy, and with something more than Dacia was aware of--something deeper, which sprang from another source than that. To-day its name was sympathy; what it might be six months hence it would not have been safe to prophesy.

She was standing just as she had stood the night before, her face framed by the aperture in the door, and her long slender hands, with their interlocked fingers, resting on the little shelf outside.

And so Burgo began his story, telling her in a condensed form everything, so far as it related to his uncle, Lady Clinton, and himself, all of which is already known to the reader. Of Clara Leslie\'s name he made no mention, it was not necessary to his purpose that he should do so; neither did he repeat much of what had passed between his uncle and himself in the course of his last brief sojourn in Great Mornington Street. That he was not without his suspicions of foul play in the case of Sir Everett, Miss Roylance, if she chose to do so, might infer from certain of his remarks, but he was especially careful that not so much as the shadow of a definite charge should be formulated by him against Lady Clinton.

"Thank you, Mr. Brabazon," said Dacia, when he ceased speaking. "If my determination to help you to escape had needed any stimulus before, it certainly does not after what you have told me. As I gather from your narrative, the one great object to which you still adhere is to obtain access to your uncle?"

"That is so, most certainly."

"Then--pardon my saying so--even should your--or our--plan of escape prove successful, you will only, as it seems to me, be in precisely the same position as before you were brought here, that is to say, you will not be a step nearer the attainment of your object."

"I admit it--sorrowfully. But the recovery of my liberty will give me one advantage--it will enable me to devise and, as I trust, carry into effect some other scheme for rescuing my uncle from the clutches of that----" He stopped abruptly, and bit his lip.

Miss Roylance smiled. "You need not mince your phrases, as far as I am concerned, where Lady Clinton is in question," she said.

"You don\'t like her ladyship?" he queried, with an ambiguous smile.

"I hate her!" was Dacia\'s emphatic reply, as her dark eyebrows came together for a moment. "Any milder term would be a euphemism." Then her face broke into a smile. "And yet, you must know, Mr. Brabazon, that to all outward seeming, she and I are the best of friends. But that is the way we women are made."

"In your note you told me that the illness which carried off Colonel Innes, like my uncle\'s, was a lingering one."

"Yes, and to me one of the strangest features of the affair is, that Sir Everard\'s symptoms seem almost precisely similar to my uncle\'s."

Burgo drew a long breath. "Is that indeed so?" he said.

For a moment or two they gazed into each other\'s eyes, Dacia\'s slowly dilating the while, reading there, perchance, what neither of them cared to express in words.

"Then you can no longer wonder, Miss Roylance," continued Burgo, "at my burning anxiety to rescue my uncle from the fate which, as it seems to me, is but too surely overtaking him."

"I did not wonder from the first," she said gently. "It is only of late that my eyes have begun to open by degrees to certain things. And even now I can scarcely believe that---- No, no; it is altogether too terrible for belief!"

For a little space she covered her face with her hands, and Burgo could see that her shoulders were heaving with suppressed emotion. He made believe to be busying himself with the lamp, while giving her time to recover her composure.

"Does it not seem a strange thing, Mr. Brabazon," said Dacia, presently, "that all through my uncle\'s illness, which lasted over three months, I was never allowed to help in nursing him, although again and again I begged to be let do so? An old woman, an Italian, and her ladyship that is now (I never have, and I never will call her \'aunt\'), took it in turns to watch by him, and would not permit me to go near him unless one or other of them was in the room at the time. And now it is the same in the case of Sir Everard. I would so gladly help to wait upon him, and do all that ............