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 fixedly at her hands. She sat for some moments; then she rose. That is all. I will go now. You have been good to me. You will believe in my gratitude.'

Jill also rose and confronted her. 'But what do you think you have done? Do you think that I shall care for you the less because your mother killed your father?'

Across the table, arrested, with the glance, almost, of a trapped creature, Mademoiselle Ludérac met her eyes. It was what she had thought; or feared; or hoped;—for she seemed trapped rather than released. And, turning her eyes away, she murmured, darkly: 'You must not try to be my friend; I cannot have a friend. It is not a happy thing for you that you should have come to Buissac.'

'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.' It floated through Jill's mind; and with it Dick's face as she had seen it a little while before. It had not been a happy thing for Dick. Dick's intuition had been right. There was a dark tower; and Mademoiselle Ludérac had been shut into it since childhood. All the more reason to break down the doors, and let her out.

'But you see I am your friend,' she said, and tears came to her eyes. 'You can't get rid of me. You don't know what a friend is. You've lived so long shut up by yourself in the dark that you are afraid of the daylight. Friends do not love you the less because you've been unhappy. They love you the more. You may not care about me,' said Jill, while her voice trembled, 'but I shall care for you always.'