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The opportunity offered itself, and May stole quietly towards the porch. Just at that moment Lord Forestfield walked to the window and peered out into the gloom.

'Who is there?' he cried, as he observed the shrinking figure.

May was silent.

'Who is there?' he repeated. 'I insist upon an answer.'

'Richard,' faltered May, spreading her hands towards him, 'I--'

'I thought it was you,' he said, in a harsh low tone. 'I shall discharge the lodge-keeper to-morrow for having permitted you to pass the gate. Now be off!' he cried, waving his hand; 'I should be sorry to have to ring for the servants to turn you away. Be off, do you hear?'

But May heard nothing. She had sunk in a fainting state on the steps.

Lord Forestfield then turned to the maid, who was hastening to her mistress's assistance. 'Take this woman away,' he cried; 'and if you value your own liberty, never bring her here again.' Then he violently closed the window and returned to his papers.

May Forestfield was brought back to her lodgings in Podbury-street--how she never knew. The maid, whose devotion had brought such obloquy upon her, half helped, half carried her mistress down the avenue, and at the lodge they found the fly which had brought them from Crawley. All the way to the station, and in the railway carriage up to town, May lay in a half-comatose, half-hysterical state; and when she had reached her lodging, and was once more installed in her clean and pretty, if not luxurious, bedroom, it was plain to the maid and to Mrs. Wilson that Lady Forestfield was 'in for an illness' of some kind or other. Their predictions were speedily verified. When the maid visited her mistress next morning, she found her in a burning fever, so far advanced that her utterances were already half delirious. The girl, who was tolerably bright, as well as thoroughly devoted, remembered that in one or two cases of slight illness, under which Lady Forestfield had suffered in Seamore-place, a fashionable physician, Dr. Chenoweth, had been called in to attend her. By the aid of the Blue-Book his address was obtained, and the maid started off in a cab to beg an immediate visit from him.