“The time has now come for a change in my plans.  I have suffered a relapse; and the date of my discharge from this place is still uncertain.  I doubt the security, both on your account, and on mine, of still leaving you at your father’s house, to await my cure.  Come to me here, therefore, to-morrow, at any hour when you can get away unperceived.  You will be let in as a visitor, and shown to my bedside, if you ask for Mr. Turner—­the name I have given to the hospital authorities.  Through the help of a friend outside these walls, I have arranged for a lodging in which you can live undiscovered, until I am discharged and can join you.  You can come here twice a week, if you like, and you had better do so, to accustom yourself to the sight of my injuries.  I told you in my first letter how and where they had been inflicted—­when you see them with your own eyes, you will be best prepared to hear what my future purposes are, and how you can aid them.

R. M.”

This was evidently the letter about which I had been consulted by the servant at North Villa; the date corresponded with the date of Mannion’s letter to me.  I noticed that the envelope was missing, and asked Ralph whether he had got it.

“No,” he replied; “Sherwin dropped the letter just in the state in which I have given it to you.  I suspect the girl took away the envelope with her, thinking that the letter which she left behind her was inside.  But the loss of the envelope doesn’t matter.  Look there:  the fellow has written her name at the bottom of the leaf; as coolly as if it was an ordinary correspondence.  She is identified with the letter, and that’s all we want in our future dealings with her father.”

“But, Ralph, do you think—­”

“Do I think her father will get her back?  If he’s in time to catch her at the hospital, he assuredly will.  If not, we shall have some little trouble on our side, I suspect.  This seems to me to be how the matter stands now, Basil:—­After that letter, and her running away, Sherwin will have nothing for it but to hold his tongue about her innocence; we may consider him as settled and done with.  As for the other rascal, Mannion, he certainly writes as if he meant to do something dangerous.  If he really does attempt to annoy us, we will mark him again (I’ll do it next time, by way of a little change!); he has no marriage certificate to shake over our heads, at any rate.  What’s the matter now?—­you’re looking pale again.”

I felt that my colour was changing, while he spoke.  There was something ominous in the contrast which, at that moment, I could not fail to draw between Mannion’s enmity, as Ralph ignorantly estimated it, and as I really knew it.  Already the first step towards the conspiracy with which I was threatened, had been taken by the departure of Sherwin’s daughter from her father’s house.  Should I, at this earliest warning of coming events, show my brother the letter I had received from Mannion?  No! such defence against the dangers threatened in it as Ralph would be sure to counsel, and to put in practice, might only include him in the life-long persecution which menaced me. When he repeated his remark about my sudden paleness, I merely accounted for it by some common-place excuse, and begged him to proceed.