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“But you will catch cold, Miss Talboys,” remonstrated Robert, looking at her anxiously, for he saw that she was trembling. “You are shivering now.”

“Not with cold,” she answered. “I am thinking of my brother George. If you have any pity for the only sister of your lost friend, do what I ask you, Mr. Audley. I must speak to you—I must speak to you—calmly, if I can.”

She put her hand to her head as if trying to collect her thoughts, and then pointed to the gate. Robert bowed and left her. He told the man to drive slowly toward the station, and walked on by the side of the tarred fence surrounding Mr. Talboys’ grounds. About a hundred yards beyond the principal entrance he came to a little wooden gate in the fence, and waited at it for Miss Talboys.

She joined him presently, with her shawl still over her head, and her eyes still bright and tearless.

“Will you walk with me inside the plantation?” she said. “We might be observed on the high-road.”

He bowed, passed through the gate, and shut it behind him.

When she took his offered arm he found that she was still trembling—trembling very violently.

“Pray, pray calm yourself, Miss Talboys,” he said; “I may have been deceived in the opinion which I have formed; I may—”

“No, no, no,” she exclaimed, “you are not deceived. My brother has been murdered. Tell me the name of that woman—the woman whom you suspect of being concerned in his disappearance—in his murder.”

“That I cannot do until—”

“Until when?”

“Until I know that she is guilty.”

“You told my father that you would abandon all idea of discovering the truth—that you would rest satisfied to leave my brother’s fate a horrible mystery never to be solved upon this earth; but you will not do so, Mr. Audley—you will not be false to the memory of your friend. You will see vengeance done upon those who have destroyed him. You will do this, will you not?”

A gloomy shadow spread itself like a dark veil over Robert Audley’s handsome face.

He remembered what he had said the day before at Southampton:

“A hand that is stronger than my own is beckoning me onward, upon the dark road.”

A quarter of an hour before, he had believed that all was over, and that he was released from the dreadful duty of discovering the secret of George’s death. Now this girl, this apparently passionless girl, had found a voice, and was urging him on toward his fate.

“If you knew what misery to me may be involved in discovering the truth, Miss Talboys,” he said, “you would scarcely ask me to pursue this business any farther?”

“But I do ask you,” she answered, with suppressed passion—I do ask you. I ask you to avenge my brother’s untimely death. Will you do so? Yes or no?”

“What if I answer no?”

“Then I will do it myself,” she exclaimed, looking at him with her bright brown eyes. “I myself will follow up the clew to this mystery; I will find this woman—though you refuse to tell me in what part of England my brother disappeared. I will travel from one end of the world to the other to find the secret of his fate, if you refuse to find it for me. I am of age; my own mistress; rich, for I have money left me by one of my aunts; I shall be able to employ those who will help me in my search, and I will make it to their interest to serve me well. Choose between the two alternatives, Mr. Audley. Shall you or I find my brother’s murderer?”

He looked in her face, and saw that her resolution was the fruit of no transient womanish enthusiasm which would give way under the iron hand of difficulty. Her beautiful features, naturally statuesque in their noble outlines, seemed transformed into marble by the rigidity of her expression. The face in which he looked was the face of a woman whom death only could turn from her purpose.