"You had better wait till the doctor has been round."

"If you don't tell me what all this means," he said impetuously, "you will make me worse."

She laid her hand upon his forehead, to find that it was perfectly cool, and he caught her fingers in his as she was drawing them away. "Don't keep me in suspense," he said piteously.

"Well, I will tell you. The police brought you here a fortnight ago.

They found you lying in a doorway, drenched with water and fast asleep.

You were quite delirious, and you have been very ill."

"Ill? Yes, I feel so weak," he muttered, as he struggled to penetrate the mist which seemed to shut him in, till the nurse's next words gave him a clue to the way out.

"We do not even know who you are; only that they suppose you to be a sailor who has just left his ship."

"Heath--Mark Heath," he said quickly.

"Ah! And your friends? We want to communicate with them."

"My friends! No; it would frighten her, poor little girl!"

"The cause for alarm is passed," said the nurse gravely.

"Yes. Ah! I begin to recollect now," he said. "Send to Miss Heath--my sister--19 Upper Brunswick Avenue, Bloomsbury."

"Yes; and now lie still."

The nurse left him, and he lay thinking, and gradually finding in the mist the pieces of the puzzle of his past adventure, till he seemed to have them nearly all there.

Then came the doctor with a few words of encouragement.

"You'll do now," he said. "Narrow escape of losing your hair, young fellow. Next time you come from sea don't touch the drink."

Mark Heath lay back thinking, and with the puzzle pretty well fitted together now all but what had happened since, half wild with exhaustion and excitement, he had taken refuge at Doctor Chartley's.

"Don't touch the drink!" he muttered. "He thinks I have had D.T. Well, I did drink--brandy. I had some. Yes; I remember now--at the doctor's, and--Great Heavens!"

He paused, with his hands pressed to his forehead; and now the light had come back clearly.

He lay waiting till the nurse passed round again, and he signed to her to come to his side.

"You have sent to my sister?"

"Yes; a messenger has been sent."

"My clothes?" he said, in an eager whisper. "Where are they?"

"They have been taken care of quite safely."

"And the bag, and the belt--the cash-belt I had strapped round my waist?"

"I will make inquiries."

The nurse went away, and Mark Heath lay in an agony of spirit which he could hardly control till her return, to announce that he had nothing whatever upon him in the way of bag or money when found by the police.

Mark lay as if stunned till the messenger returned with the intelligence that Miss Heath had left the lodgings indicated; that the people there were new, and could give no information whatever.

"But you have other friends," said the nurse, as she looked down pityingly in the patient's agitated face.

"Yes," he said, "I have friends. Write for me to--"

He paused for a few moments, with a hysterical sob rising to his lips as he recalled how he had struggled to return to her wealthy, and had come back a beggar.

"Yes, to--"

The gently-spoken inquiry roused him, and he went on. "To Miss Richmond--"

"Richmond?" said the nurse, looking up inquiringly as she took down the name in a little memorandum-book.

"Miss Richmond Chartley, 27 Ramillies Street, Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, to beg her to find and send my sister here."

The nurse smiled, and left him to his thoughts, which now came freely enough--too freely to help him to convalescence.

It was late in the evening when the nurse came to announce that there were visitors; and after a few grave firm words, bidding him be calm, she left him, and returned with Janet and Richmond, both trembling and agitated, to grasp his hands, and fight hard against the desire to throw themselves sobbing upon his breast.

The nurse remained, not from curiosity, but to watch over her patient, whom she had literally dragged from the grasp of death, while, after the first loving words, Mark Heath gazed at Richmond in a troubled way, and proceeded to tell of his adventures.

"But did you really bring back a bag of diamonds, Mark, or is it--"

"Fancy," he said bitterly. "No; it is no fancy. I have been delirious, Jenny; but I am sane enough now. I had the bag of diamonds, and over a hundred pounds in gold, in a belt about my waist. Rich, darling, I was silent during these past two years; for I vowed that I would not write again till I could come back to you and say I have fulfilled my promise, and now I have come to you a beggar."

"Yes," said Richmond, laying her hand in his, as an ineffably sweet look of content beamed from her eyes in his, and there was tender yearning love in every tone of her sweet deep voice; "but you have come back alive after we had long mourned you as dead."

"Better that I had been," he said bitterly. "Better that that dark night's work had been completed than I should have come back a beggar."

Janet and Richmond exchanged glances; which with a sick man's suspicion he noted, and his brow contracted.

"They doubt me," he thought.

"But you have come back, Mark. We are young; and there is our life before us. I do not complain," said Richmond gently. "We must wait."

"Wait!" he said bitterly; and he uttered a low groan, which made the nurse approach. "No, no," he said, "I will be quite calm." The nurse drew back.

"Tell me, Mark," said Janet, with her pretty little earnest face puckered up. "Why did you not come straight to me? How stupid? Of course you didn't know where, as you did not get my last letters?"

"No, I have had no letters for a year. How could I, out in that desert?"

"But, Mark, you recollect being pursued by those men!"

"Yes, yes."