"How cruel you are, Janet!"

"For trying to do what is right," she said firmly. "What would your sister say if, after all that has passed, I were to be so weak?"

"May I follow you at a distance, as I have done all this time?" he pleaded.

"No. You have only frightened me almost to death," she replied. "Will you come up and see poor Mark?"

"Not to-night," he said bitterly; "I couldn't bear it now. Janet, if I go to the bad, it won't be all my fault. I know I'm a weak fellow, but with something to act as ballast, I should be all right. What have I done that you should be so cold?"

For answer, Janet held out her hand.

"Good-night, Mr Chartley," she said quietly; but he did not take the hand, only turned away, walking rapidly along the street, while, fighting hard to keep from bursting into a violent fit of sobbing, Janet hurried up to her room, to find her brother looking haggard and wild as he slowly paced the floor.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

MARK HEATH IN THE DARK.

"No--no--no!" Always the same determined answer to the declarations of Janet that some steps should be taken to investigate the affairs of the night on which her brother had first reached London.

"No," he said; "I will have nothing done. Let me get well, and away from here. I've escaped with my life."

"And what will you do, Mark?" asked Janet, as she sat by his side.

"Try again," he said. "But I must first get well."

He had heard that the doctor was ill, but everything else had been kept from him, till one evening, as he was seated by the fire at Janet's neat little lodgings, and his sister was called down to see a visitor.

She had a suspicion of who it was, and found Richmond waiting.

"Come up and see him."

Richmond hesitated.

"I must not stay long," she said. "My father frets for me if I am away."

"And I am situated almost the same. Mark does not like to be left.

Come up, dear, and help me to persuade him that he ought to employ the police."

"No, no! don't talk of them," said Richmond, with a shudder. "I want the horror at our house forgotten, and they keep reminding me that the law does not sleep."

"Why, Rich, how strangely you talk!"

"Strangely, dear! No. Only it comes back like a nightmare ever since that terrible affair, so soon as it is mentioned. I seem to be wandering about the house in misery, fever, and pain, trying to see through a mist that I cannot penetrate. I don't know how it is or what it means, but I have this horrible thought troubling me, that I came down that night to go to the surgery, and that I saw something."

"Saw something! Saw what?"

"Ah! that is what I cannot tell," said Rich with a shudder. "I was better this morning, and more hopeful. My poor father seemed a little clearer in his mind, but the past is all a blank to him."

"He knew me, dear, when I came yesterday."

"Oh, yes! and he knows me well enough. He talks sensibly about what is going on around him. But that night when he was struck down, the blows seemed to break away the connection between the present and the past.

The physician, who has seen him, says very little, but I can see that he considers the case hopeless."

"Oh, don't say that, dear! We must all hope. I hope to be something better some day than a poor teacher. Come up now, and help me to persuade Mark to have in the police."

"No, no!" cried Rich hastily.

"Why not, dear? Think what it means if it is true about the diamonds, and we could get them back."

"But it cannot be true, Janet; and as to the police, they make me shudder. They were at our house this morning to see Hendon, and with him my father, to try whether they could revive his memory, and get hold of a clue to those men who came to our house that night, and they have found out nothing. They say they are straining every nerve now to find that poor boy. They think he must hold the clue."

"I think I could find it all out if I tried," said Janet. "Had your father any enemies?"

Richmond shook her head.

"Any one to whom he owed money?"

Richmond started, and her thoughts reverted to Poynter.

"No, no, no--impossible! Let it rest, dear. I have thought over it, till it nearly drives me mad!" she cried excitedly.

"It is very strange;" continued Janet musingly. "I don't like to let it rest, and there is our trouble, too. Rich dear, has it ever occurred to you that it must have been the same night when poor Mark was found wandering about?"

"Yes, dear. I have calculated it out from what the hospital sister told me. It was the same night."

Rich looked at her wonderingly.

"It was, dear," continued Janet. "While you had that horror at home, I was sleeping here comfortably, and poor Mark was wandering about the cruel streets half wild."

Rich made a gesture to her friend to be silent, and Janet passed her arm about her waist, to lead her up-stairs, but with the full determination to try and make some investigation. For though there were times when the thought of her brother having brought home a bag of diamonds seemed mythical, and the birth of his diseased imagination--especially as he never named them now--at other times visions of comparative wealth had come to her, in the midst of which she seemed to see herself with Hendon, and her old companion and her brother happily looking on.

Mark was seated gazing moodily at the fire as Richmond entered with his sister, and he rose to take her hands, and lead her to a chair.

But somehow both seemed constrained and troubled by thoughts which they kept from each other.

"I know," said Janet to herself, "it's that dreadful money which is keeping them apart, and if I don't do something, Mark will be going off again to seek his fortune, and it is like condemning poor Rich and himself to a life of misery and waiting."

She sat working, but furtively watching the others all the while.

"This poverty is killing us all," she said to herself at last, "and I will speak. It may be true, and he shall do something to find out."

"Mark dear," she said aloud, "I have something to say."

"Indeed! Well, what is it?"

"I've come to the conclusion that, now you are better, you ought to speak out like a man, and--"