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 CHAPTER XI.

I UNDERGO AN ORDEAL; I PLAY WITH A FIRE.

I suppose something must have altered in my face in my effort to conceal the strange emotion that I suffered. For a soft look crept in his eye, and he said in that rich voice that had impressed me in the stable on the first night of our acquaintancy,

"My Lady Barbara, I have not hurt you? If once I pained my benefactress I could ne'er forgive myself."

"N-n-no," I stammered, for to be quite plain his tenderness played a greater havoc with me than his strength.

"I believe I have," he says, and a tear was in his voice, and such a deal of heaven in his look that I could not meet it, and had to gaze upon the ground.

"N-n-no," I stammered, and hated him for being a beggar and a fugitive, and Mrs. Polly Emblem for being in the room. And not less did I hate myself for being weak enough to forget my training and my sphere of life.

"Captain," I sighed, in the voice of spring among the trees, "destroy that blue document of