"You foolish boy!" She looked up at him and smiled, with eyes full of tears. "I will be better alone and quiet. Sleep and solitude will quite restore me. Go! Go! You will be late, and my lady dislikes being kept waiting."

He kissed her and went, casting one long, lingering backward look at the wife he loved. And with a pang bitterer than death came the remembrance afterward of how she had urged him to leave her that night.

Thus they parted—to look into each other's eyes no more, in love and trust for a dark and tragic time.

Sybilla Silver, standing at the house door, was gazing out, at the yellow February sun sinking pale and watery into the livid horizon tine, as the baronet ran down-stairs, drawing on his gloves. He paused, with his usual courtesy, to speak to his dependent as he went by.

"The sky yonder looks ominous," he said, "and this wailing, icy blast is the very desolation of desolation. There is a storm brewing."

Miss Silver's black eyes gleamed, and her white teeth showed in a sinister smile.

"A storm?" she repeated. "Yes, I think there is, and you will be caught in it, Sir Everard, if you stay late."



CHAPTER XXII.

AT NIGHT IN THE BEECH WALK.

The instant Sir Everard was out of sight Sybilla ran up to her chamber, and presently reappeared, dressed for a walk.

Even the long, shrouding mantle she wore could not disguise the exquisite symmetry of her graceful form, and the thick brown veil could not dim the luster of her flashing Assyrian eyes. She smiled back, before flitting away, at the dark, bright, sparkling face her mirror showed her.

"You are a very pretty person, my dear Miss Silver," she said—"prettier even than my lady herself, though I say it. Worlds have been lost for less handsome faces than this in the days gone by, and Mr. Parmalee will have every reason to be proud of his wife—when he gets her."

She ran lightly down-stairs, a sarcastic smile still on her lips. In the lower hall stood Mr. Edwards, the valet, disconsolately gazing at the threatening prospect. He turned around, and his dull eyes lighted up at sight of this darkling vision of beauty—for Mr. Parmalee was by no means the only gentleman with the good taste to admire handsome Sybilla.

"Going hout, Miss Silver!" Mr. Edwards asked. "Huncommon urgent your business must be to take you from 'ome such a hevening as this. 'Ow's my lady?"

"My lady is not at all well, Mr. Edwards," answered Sybilla. "Sir Everard was obliged to go alone to his mother's, my lady's headache is so intense. Claudine is with her, I believe. We are going to have a storm, are we not? I shall be obliged to hurry back."

She flitted away as she spoke, drawing down her veil, and disappearing while yet Mr. Edwards was trying to make a languid proffer of his services as escort. He lounged easily up against the window, gazing with calm admiration after her.

"An huncommon 'andsome and lady-looking young pusson that," reflected Sir Everard's gentleman. "I shouldn't mind hasking her to be my missus one of these days. That face of hers and them dashing ways would take helegantly behind the bar of a public."

Sybilla sped on her way down the village to the Blue Bell. Just before she reached the inn she encountered Mr. Parmalee himself, taking a constitutional, a cigar in his mouth, and his hands deep in his trousers pockets. He met and greeted his fair betrothed with natural phlegm.

"How do, Sybilla?" nodding. "I kind of thought you'd be after me, and so I stepped out. You've been and delivered that there little message of mine, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Sybilla; "and she will meet you to-night in the Beech Walk, and hear what you have got to say."

"The deuce she will!" said the artist; "and have her fire-eating husband catch us and set the flunkies at me. Not if I know myself. If my lady wants to hear what I've got to say, let my lady come to me."

"She never will," responded Sybilla. "You don't know her. Don't be an idiot, George—do as she requests. Meet her to-night in the Beech Walk."

"And have the baronet come upon us in the middle of our confab! Look here, Sybilla, I ain't a cowardly feller, you know, in the main; but, by George! it ain't pleasant to be horsewhipped by an outrageous young baronet or kicked from the gates by his under-strappers."

"There is no danger. Sir Everard is not at home, and will not be before ten o'clock at least. He is gone to dine at The Grange with his mother; and my lady was to have gone, too, but your message frightened her, and she told him little white lies, and insisted on his going by himself. And, you silly old stupid, if you had two ideas in your head, you would see that this opportunity of braving his express command, and entering the lion's den to meet his wife by night and by stealth, is the most glorious opportunity of revenge you could have. Sir Everard is nearly mad with jealousy and suspicion already. What will he be when he finds his wife of a month has lied to him to meet you alone and in secret at the Beech Walk? I tell you, Mr. Parmalee, you will be gloriously revenged!"

"By thunder!" cried the artist, "I never thought of that. I'll do it, Sybilla—I'll do it, so help me! Tell my lady I'll be there right on the minute; and do you take care that confounded baronet finds it out. I said I'd pay him off for every blow, and I'll do it, by the Eternal!"

"And strike through her!" hissed Sybilla, with glittering black eyes, "and every blow will go straight through the core of his proud heart. We'll torture him, George Parmalee, as man never was tortured before."

"What a little devil you are, Sybilla!" he said, with lover-like candor. "I've heard tell that you wimmin knock us men into a cocked hat in the way of hating, and I now begin to think it is true. What has this 'ere baronet done to you, I should admire to know? You don't hate him like the old sarpent for nothing."

"What has he done to me?" repeated Sybilla, with a strange, slow smile. "That is easily told. He gave me a home when I was homeless; he was my friend when I was friendless. I have broken his bread and drunk of his cup, and slept under his roof, and—I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!"

Mr. Parmalee took out his cigar and stared at her in horror.

"I tell you what it is, Miss Silver," he said, "I don't like this sort of thing—I don't, by George! I ain't surprised at a person hating a person, because I hate him myself; but for a young woman that is going to be my wife to cut up like this here, and swear everlasting vengeance—well, I don't like it. You see, wild cats ain't the most comfortable sort of pets a man can have in his house, and how do I know but it may be my turn next?"

"You precious old stupid! As if I could hate you, if I tried. No, no, George; you may trust Sybilla. The wild cat will sheathe her claws in triple folds of velvet for you."

"Humph!" said Mr. Parmalee; "but the claws will still be there. However, I ain't a-going to quarrel with you about it. I like a spunky woman, and I hate him. I'll meet my lady to-night, and you see that my lady's husband finds it out."

"Until then," responded Sybilla, folding her mantle closer about her, "remember the hour—eight sharp—and don't keep her waiting. Before he sleeps to-night the proudest baronet in the realm shall know why his wife deliberately deceived him to meet a strange man by night and by stealth in the park, where her husband had ordered him never to set foot again."

She fluttered away in the chill spring twilight with the last words, leaving her fiance gazing after her with an expression that was not altogether unmixed admiration.

"I'll be darned if I ever met the like of you, Miss Silver, in all my travels. You might be own sister to Lucifer himself for wickedness and revengefulness. I'll find out what's at the bottom of all this cantankerous spite before I make you Mrs. G. W. Parmalee, or I'll know the reason why. It's all very fine to have a handsome wife, with big black eyes and a spunky spirit, but a fellow doesn't want a wife that will bury the carving-knife in him the first time he contradicts her."

Sybilla was a good walker; the last yellow line of the watery February sunset had hardly faded as she tripped up the long drive under the gaunt, tossing trees. Mr. Edwards still lounged in elegant leisure in the hall, conversing with a gigantic young footman, and his fishy eyes kindled for the second time as Sybilla appeared, flushed and bright and sparkling, after her windy, twilight walk.

"I have outstripped the storm after all, you see," she remarked as she went by. "I don't believe we shall have it before midnight. Oh, Claudine! is my lady in her room? I have been on an errand for her down the village."

She had encountered the jaunty little French girl on the upper landing, and paused to put the question.

"Yes," Claudine said. "Madame's headache was easier. She is reading in her dressing-room."

Sybilla tapped at the dressing-room door, then turned the handle and entered. It was an exquisite little bijou of a chamber, with fluted walls of rose silk, and delicious plump beauties with bare shoulders and melting eyes, by Greuze. A wood fire flickered on the marble hearth, and was flashed back from lofty mirrors as tall as the room.

Lying back in an arm-chair, her book fallen aimlessly on her lap, her dark, deep eyes looking straight before her into the evening gloaming, my lady sat alone.

The melancholy wash of the waves on the shore, the mournful sighing of the evening wind among the groaning trees, the monotonous ticking of a dainty buhl clock, and the light fall of the cinders sounded abnormally loud in the dead silence of the apartment.

Lady Kingsland turned round at the opening of the door, and her face hardened into that cold look it always wore at sight of her husband's brilliant protegee.

"I have been to the village, my lady," Sybilla said. "I have seen Mr. Parmalee. He will be in the Beech Walk precisely at eight."

My lady bent her head in cold acknowledgment. Sybilla paused an instant, determined to make her speak.

"Can I be of service to you in any way in this matter, my lady?" she asked.

"You?" in proud surprise. "Certainly not. I wish to be alone, Miss Silver. Be good enough to go."

Sybilla's little brown fist clinched itself furiously, once on the landing outside.

"I can't humble her!" she thought. "I can't make her fear me. I can't triumph over her, do what I will. I have her secret and I hold her in my power, but she is prouder than Lucifer himself, and she would let me stand forth and tell all, and if one pleading word would stop me, she would not say it. 'The brave may die, but can not yield!' She should have been a man."

She went to the window and drew out her watch; it wanted a quarter of eight.

"In fifteen minutes my lady goes; in fifteen more I shall follow her, and not alone. I am afraid Sir Everard's slumbers will be rather disturbed to-night."

The last yellow gleam of the dying day was gone, and a sickly, pallid moon glimmered dully among drifts of scudding black clouds. An icy blast wailed up from the sea, and the rocking trees were like dryad specters in writhing agony. The distant Beech Walk looked black and grim and ghostly in the weird light.

A great clock high up in a windy turret struck eight. A moment after the door of my lady's dressing-room opened. A dark, shrouded figure emerged, flitted swiftly down the long gallery, down the stair-way, and vanished.

Ten minutes later Edwards, yawning forlornly, still in the entrance hall, beheld Miss Silver coming toward him with an anxious face, a large shawl thrown over her head.

"Going out again?" the valet exclaimed. "And such a nasty night, too. You are fond of walking, Miss S., and no mistake."

"I'm not going for a walk," said Sybilla. "I am going to look for a locket I lost this afternoon. I was out in the park, in the direction of the Beech Walk, and there I must have dropped it."

"Better wait until to-morrow," suggested Edwards. "The wind's 'owling through the trees, and it's colder than the Harctic regions. Better wait."

"I can not. The locket was a present, and I value it exceedingly. I thought of asking you to accompany me, but as it is so cold perhaps you had better not."

"Oh, I'll go with pleasure!" said Mr. Edwards. "If you can stand the cold, I can, I dessay. Wait till I get my 'at and hovercoat—I won't be a minute."

Miss Silver waited. Mr. Edwards reappeared in a twinkling.

"'Adn't I better fetch a lantern?" he suggested. "It will be himpossible to see it, heven if it should be there."

"No," said Sybilla. "The moon is shining, and the locket will glimmer on the snow. Come!"

She took his arm, and they started at a brisk pace for the Beech Walk. The ground, baked hard as iron, rang under their tread, and whether it was the bitter blast or not, Mr. Edwards could not tell, but his companion's face was flushed with a more brilliant glow, in the ghostly moonlight, than he had ever before seen there.

They reached the long grove of magnificent copper-beeches, and just without its entrance Miss Silver began searching for her lost locket.

"It is not here," said Sybilla. "Let us go further down——"

She paused at a sudden gesture of her companion.

"Hush!" he said. "There is some one talking in the Beech Walk."

Both paused and stood stock still. Borne unmistakably on the night wind, voices came to them—the soft voice of a woman, the deeper tones of a man.

"One of the maids, I dare say," Sybilla said, carelessly, "holding tryst with her lover."

"No," said the valet; "not one of the maids would set foot hinside this walk hafter nightfall for a kingdom! They say it's 'aunted. Come forward a little, and let's see if we can't 'ave a look at the talkers. Whoever it is, he's hup to no good, I'll be bound!"

Very softly, stealing on tiptoe, the twain approached the entrance of the avenue. The watery moonlight breaking through a rift in the clouds, shone out for an instant above the trees, and showed them a man and a woman, standing face to face, earnestly talking. Mr. Edwards barely repressed a cry of consternation.

"Good Lord!" he gasped; "it's my lady!"

"Hush!" cried Sybilla. "Who is the man?"

As if some inward prescience told him they were there, the man lifted his hat at that very instant, and plainly showed his face.

"The Hamerican, by Jove!" gasped the horrified valet. Sybilla Silver's eyes blazed like coals of fire, and the demoniac smile, that made her brilliant beauty hideous, gleamed on her lips.

She grasped the man's arm with slender fingers of iron, and stood gloating over the scene.

Not one word could they hear—the distance was too great—but they could see my lady's passionate gestures; they could see the white hands clasp and cover her face; they could see her wildly excited, even in that dim light. And once they saw her take from her pocket her purse, and pour a handful of shining sovereigns into Mr. Parmalee's extended hand.

Nearly an hour they had stood, petrified gazers, when they were aroused as by a thunder-clap. A horse came galloping furiously up the avenue, as only one rider ever galloped there. Sybilla Silver just repressed a scream of exultation—no more.

"It is Sir Everard Kingsland!" she cried, in a whisper of fierce delight, "in time to catch his sick wife in the Beech Walk with the man he hates!"



CHAPTER XXIII.

MY LADY'S SECRET.

It was quite dark before prudent Mr. Parmalee, notwithstanding Sybilla's assurance that the baronet was away from home, ventured within the great entrance gates of the park. He was not, as he said himself, a coward altogether; but he had a lively recollection of the pummeling he had already received, and a wholesome dread of the scientific hitting of this strong-fisted young aristocrat. When he did venture, his coat-collar was so pulled up that recognition was next to impossible.

Mr. Parmalee, smoking a cigar, made his way to the Beech Walk, and leaning against a giant tree, stared at the moon, and waited. The loud-voiced turret clock struck eight a moment after he had taken his position.

"Time is up," thought the photographer. "My lady ought to be here now. I'll give her another quarter. If she isn't with me in that time, then good-bye to Lady Kingsland and my keeping her secret."

Ten minutes passed. As he replaced his watch a light step sounded on the frozen snow, a shadow darkened the entrance, and Lady Kingsland's pale, proud face looked fixedly at him in the moonlight. He took off his hat and threw away his half-smoked cigar.

"My Lady Kingsland!"

She bowed haughtily, hovering aloof.

"You wished to see me, Mr. Parmalee—that is your name, I believe. What is it you have to say to me?"

"I don't think you really need to ask that question, my lady. You know as well as I do, or I'm mistaken."

"Who are you?" she demanded, impatiently, impetuously. "How do you come to know my secret? How do you come to be possessed of that picture?"

"I told you before. She gave it to me herself."

"For God's sake, tell me the truth! Don't deceive me! Do you really mean it? Have you really seen my——"

She stopped, shuddering in some horrible inward repulsion from head to foot.

"I really have," rejoined Mr. Parmalee. "I know the—the party in question like a book. She told me her story, she gave me her picture herself, of her own free will, and she told me where to find you. She is in London now, all safe, and waiting—a little out of patience, though, by this time, I dare say."

"Waiting!" Lady Kingsland gasped the word in white terror. "Waiting for what?"

"To see you, my lady."

There was a blank pause. My lady covered her face with both hands, and again that convulsive shudder shook her from head to foot.

"She is very penitent, my lady," Mr. Parmalee said, in a softer tone. "She is very poor, and ill and heart-broken. Even you, my lady, might pity and forgive her if you saw her now."

"For Heaven's sake, hush! I don't want to hear. Tell me how you met her first. I never heard your name until that day in the library."

"No more you didn't," said the artist. "You see, my lady, it was pure chance-work from first to last. I was coming over here on a little speculation of my own in the photographic line, and being low in pocket and pretty well used to rough it, I was coming in the steerage. There was a pretty hard crowd of us—Dutch and Irish and all sorts mixed up there—an' among 'em one that looked as much out of her element as a fish out of water. Any one could tell with half an eye she'd been a lady, in spite of her shabby duds and starved, haggard face. She was alone. Not a soul knew her, not a soul cared for her, and half-way across she fell sick and had like to died."

Mr. Parmalee paused. My lady stood before him, ashen, white to the lips, listening with wild, wide eyes.

"Go on," she said, almost in a whisper.

"Well, my lady," Mr. Parmalee resumed, modestly, "I'm a pretty rough sort of a fellow, as you may see, and I hain't never experienced religion or that, and don't lay claim to no sort of goodness; but for all that I've an old mother over to home, and for her sake I couldn't stand by and see a poor, sufferin' feller-critter of the female persuasion and not lend a helping hand. I nussed that there sick party by night and by day, and if it hadn't been for that nussin' and the little things I bought her to eat, she'd have been under the Atlantic now, though I do say it."

My lady held out her hand, aglitter with rich rings.

"You are a better man than I took you for," she said softly. "I thank you with all my heart."

Mr. Parmalee took the dainty hand, rather confusedly, in his finger-tips, held it a second, and dropped it.

"It was one night, when she thought herself dying, that she told me her story—told me everything, my lady—who she had been, who she was, and what she was coming across for. My lady, nobody could be sorrier than she was then. I pitied her, by George, more than I ever pitied any one before in my life. She had been unhappy and remorseful for a long time, but she was in despair. It was too late for repentance, she thought. There was nothing for it but to go on to the dreadful end. Sometimes, when she was almost mad, she—well, she took to drink, you know, and he wasn't in any way a good or kind protector to her—Thorndyke wasn't."

My lady flung up both arms with a shrill scream.

"Not that name," she cried—"not that accursed name, if you would not drive me mad!"

"I beg your pardon!" said Mr. Parmalee; "I won't. Well, she heard of your father's death—he told her, you see—and that completed her despair. She took to drink worse and worse; she got out of all bounds—sort of frantic, you see. Twice she tried to kill herself—once by poison, once by drowning; and both times he—you know who I mean—caught her and stopped her. He hadn't even mercy enough on her, she says, to let her die!"

"For God's sake, don't tell me of those horrors!" my lady cried, in agony. "I feel as though I were going mad."

"It is hard," said the artist, "but I can't help it—it's true, all the same. She heard of your marriage to Sir Everard Kingsland next. It was the last thing he ever taunted her with; for, crazed with his jeers and insults, she fled from him that night, sold all she possessed but the clothes on her back, and took passage for England."

"To see me?" asked Harriet, hoarsely.

"To see you, my lady, but all unknown. She had no wish to force herself upon you; she only felt that she was dying, and that if she could look on your face once before she went out of life, and see you well, and beautiful, and beloved, and happy, she could lie down in the dust at your gates and die content.

"She made me write you a line or two that night," continued Mr. Parmalee—"that night which she thought her last—and she begged me to find you and give it to you, with her picture. I have it yet; here they are, both."

He drew from his pocket the picture and a note, and gave them into my lady's hand.

"She didn't die," he resumed; "she got better, and I took her to London, left her there, and came down here. Now, my lady, I don't make no pretense of being better than I am; I took this matter up in the way of speculation, in the view to make money out of it, and nothing else. I said to myself: 'Here's this young lady, the bride of a rich baronet; it ain't likely she's been and told him all this, and it ain't likely her pa has died and left her ignorant of it. Now, what's to hinder my making a few honest pounds out of it, at the same time I do a good turn for this poor, sufferin'. sinful critter here? That's what I said, my lady, and that's what I am here for. I'm a poor man, and I live by my wits, and a stroke of business is a stroke of business, no matter how far it's out of the ordinary run. Your husband don't know this here story; you don't want him to know it, and you come down handsomely and I'll keep your secret."

"You have rather spoiled your marketable commodity, then, Mr. Parmalee. It would have paid you better not to have shared your secret with Sybilla Silver."

"She's told you, has she?" said the artist, rather surprised. "Now that's what I call mean. You don't think she'll peach to Sir Everard, do you?"

"I think it extremely likely that she will. She hates me, Mr. Parmalee, and Miss Silver would do a good deal for a person she hates. You should have waited until she became Mrs. Parmalee before making her the repository of your valuable secrets."

"It's no good talking about it now, however," said Mr. Parmalee, rather doggedly. "I've told her, and it can't be helped. And now, my lady, I don't want to be caught here, and it's getting late, and what are you going to give a fellow for all his trouble?"

"What will hardly repay you," said my lady, "for I have very little of my own, as you doubtless have informed yourself ere this. What I have you have earned and shall receive. At the most it will not exceed three hundred pounds. Of my husband's money not one farthing shall any one ever receive from me for keeping a secret of mine."

"I must have more than that," he said, resolutely. "Three hundred pounds is nothing to a lady like you."

"It is all I have—all I can give you, and to give you that I must sell the trinkets my dear dead father gave me. But it is for his sake I do it—to preserve his secret. My jewels, my diamonds, my husband's gifts I will not touch, nor one farthing of his money will you ever receive. You entirely mistake me, Mr. Parmalee. My secret I will keep from him while I can; I swore a solemn oath by my father's death-bed to do so. But to pay you with his money—to bribe you to deceive him with his gold—I never will. I would die first."

She stood before him erect, defiant, queenly.

Mr. Parmalee frowned darkly.

"Suppose I go to him then, my lady—suppose I pour this nice little story into his ear—what then?"

"Then," she exclaimed, in tones of ringing scorn, "you will receive nothing. His servants will thrust you from his gates. No, Mr. Parmalee, if money be your object you will make a better bargain with me than with him. What is mine you shall have—every farthing I own, every trinket I possess—on condition that you depart and never trouble me more. That is all I can do—all I will do. Decide which you prefer."

"There is no choice," replied the American, sullenly; "half a loaf is better than nothing. I'll take the three hundred pounds. And now, my lady, what do you mean to do about her? She wants to see you."

"See me!" An expression of horror swept over my lady's face. "Not for ten thousand worlds!"

"Well, now, I call that hard," said Mr. Parmalee. "I don't care what she's done or what she's been, it's hard! She's sorry now, and no one can be more than that. I take an interest in that unfortunate party, my lady; and if you knew how she hankers after a sight of you—how poor and ill and heart-broken she is—how she longs to hear you say once, 'I forgive you,' before she dies—well, you wouldn't be so hard."

"Stop—stop!" Lady Kingsland exclaimed.

She turned away, leaning against a tree, her face more ghastly than the face of a dead woman.

Mr. Parmalee watched her. He could see the fierce struggle that shook her from head to foot.

"Don't be hard on her!" he pleaded. "She's very humble now, and fallen very low. She won't live long, and you'll be happier on your own death-bed, my lady, for forgiving her poor soul!"

She put out her hand blindly and took his.

"I will see her," she said, hoarsely. "May God forgive her and pity me! Fetch her down here, Mr. Parmalee, and I will see her."

"Yes, my lady; but as I'm rather short of funds, perhaps—"

She drew out her purse and poured its glittering contents into his palm.

"It is all I have now; when you return I will have the three hundred pounds. You must take her back to New York. She and I must never meet again—for my husband's sake."

"I understand, my lady. I'll do what I can. I'll take her back, and I'll trouble you no more."

His last words were drowned in the gallop of Sir Galahad up the avenue.

"It is my husband," my lady exclaimed. "I must leave you. When will you—and she—return?"

"In two days we will be here. I'll give out she's a sister of mine at the inn, and I'll send you word and arrange a meeting."

Mr. Parmalee drew down his hat and strode away. Weak, trembling, my lady leaned for a few moments against a tree, trying to recover herself, then turned slowly and walked back to the house to meet her husband.



CHAPTER XXIV.

MISS SILVER BREAKS THE NEWS.

The Grange, the jointure house of the Dowager Lady Kingsland, stood, like all such places, isolated and alone, at the furthest extremity of the village. It was a dreary old building enough, weather-beaten and brown, with primly laid-out grounds, and row upon row of stiff poplars waving in the wintery wind. A lonely, forlorn old place—a vivid contrast to the beauty and brightness of Kingsland Court; and from the first day of her entrance, Lady Kingsland, senior, hated her daughter-in-law with double hatred and rancor.

"For the pauper half-pay officer's bold-faced daughter we must drag out our lives in this horrible place!" she burst out, bitterly. "While Harriet Hunsden reigns en princesse amid the splendors of our ancestral home, we must vegetate in this rambling, dingy old barn. I'll never forgive your brother, Mildred—I'll never forgive him as long as I live for marrying that creature!"

"Dear mamma," the gentle voice of Milly pleaded, "you must not blame Everard. He loves her, and she is as beautiful as an angel. It would have been all the same if he had married Lady Louise, you know. We would still have had to quit Kingsland Court."

"Kingsland Court would have had an earl's daughter for its mistress in that case. But to think that this odious, fox-hunting, steeple-chase-riding, baggage-cart-following fille du regiment should rule there, while we—Oh, it sets me wild only to think of it!"

"Don't think of it, then, mamma," coaxed Mildred. "We will make this wilderness 'blossom as the rose' next summer. As for Harrie, you don't know her yet—you will like her better when you do!"

"I shall never like her!" Lady Kingsland replied, with bitterness. "I don't want to like her! She is a proud upstart, and I sincerely hope she may make Everard see his folly in throwing himself away before the honey-moon is ended."

It was quite useless for Mildred to try to combat her mother's fierce resentment. Day after day she wandered through the desolate, draughty rooms, bewailing her hard lot, regretting the lost glories of Kingsland, and nursing her resentment toward her odious daughter-in-law; and when the bridal pair returned, and Milly timidly suggested the propriety of calling, my lady flatly refused.

"I never will!" she said, spitefully. "I'll never call on Captain Hunsden's daughter. I never countenanced the match before he made it. I shall not countenance it now when she has usurped my place. She should never have been received in society—a person whose mother was no better than she ought, to be."

"But, mamma—"

"Hold your tongue, Milly! You always were a little fool! I tell you I will not call on my son's wife, and no more shall you. Let her come here."

My lady adhered to her resolution with iron force, and received her son, when the day after his return he rode over, with freezing formality. But with all that, she was none the less deeply displeased when he called and came to dinner and left his bride at home.

"My humble house is not worthy my lady's presence, I dare say," she remarked. "After the magnificence of barrack life and the splendor of Hunsden Hall, I scarcely wonder she can not stoop to your mother's jointure house. A lady in her position must draw the line somewhere."

"You are unjust, mother," her son said, striving to speak calmly. "You always were unjust to Harriet. If you will permit us, we will both do ourselves the pleasure of dining with you to-morrow."

"It shall be precisely as the Prince and Princess of Kingsland please. My poor board will be only too much honored."

"It is natural, I suppose," he thought, riding homeward. "The contrast between Kingsland Court and The Grange is striking. She is jealous and angry and hurt—poor mother! Harrie must come with me to-morrow, and try to please her."

But when to-morrow came Harrie had a headache, and the baronet was obliged to go alone.

There was an ominous light in his mother's eyes, and a look of troubled inquiry in Mildred's face that told him a revelation was coming.

His mother's eyes transfixed him the instant he appeared.

"I thought your wife was coming?"

"Harriet had a shocking bad headache. She has been ill all day," he replied, hastily. "It was quite impossible for her to leave her room. She regrets——"

"That will do, Everard!" His mother rose as she spoke, with a short laugh. "I understand it all. Don't trouble yourself to explain. Let us go to the dining-room—dinner waits."

"But, my dear mother, it is really as I say. Harrie is ill."

"Ill? Yes, ill of a guilty conscience, perhaps! Such a mother—such a daughter! I always knew how this mad mesalliance would end. I don't know that I am surprised. I don't know that I regret it. I am only sorry that my son's wife should be the first to disgrace the name of Kingsland!"

"Disgrace? Take care, mother! That is an ugly word."

"It is. But, however ugly, it is always best to call these things by their right names."

"These things! What under heaven do you mean?"

"Do you really need to ask?" she said, with cold contempt. "Are you indeed so blind where this woman is concerned? Why, my son's wife is the talk of the town, and my son sits here and asks me what I mean?"

"Mamma! mamma!" Mildred said, imploringly. "Pray don't! You are cruel! Don't say such dreadful things!"

"Your mother is cruel, and unjust, and unnatural!" he said, in a hard, hoarse voice. "Do you tell me what she means, Mildred."

"Don't ask me, Everard!" Mildred said, in distress. "We have heard cruel, wicked stories—-false, I know—about Harrie and—and a stranger—an American gentleman—who is stopping at the Blue Bell Inn."

"Yes, Everard," his mother said, pity for him, hatred of his wife, strangely mingled in look and tone, "your bride of a month is the talk of the place. The names of Lady Kingsland and this unknown man go whispered together from lip to lip."

"What do they say?"

"Nothing!" Mildred exclaimed, indignantly—"nothing but their own base suspicions! She nearly fainted at first sight of him. He showed her a picture, and she ran out of the room and fell into hysterics. Since then he has written to her, and mysterious personages—females in disguise—visit him at the Blue Bell. That is what they whisper, Everard; nothing more."

"Nothing more!" echoed her mother. "Quite enough, I think. What would you have, Miss Kingsland? Everard, who is this man?"

"You appear to know more than I do, mother. He is an American—a traveling photograph artist—and my wife never laid eyes on him until she saw him, the day after our arrival, in the library. As to the fainting and the hysterics, I chanced to be in the library all through that first interview, and I saw neither one nor the other. I am sorry to spoil the pretty romance in which you take such evident delight, my good, kind, charitable mother; but truth obliges me to tell you it is a fabrication from beginning to end. And now, if you will be good enough to tell me the name of the originator of this report, you will confer upon me the last favor I shall ever ask of you. My wife's honor is mine; and neither she nor I will ever set foot in a house where such stories are credited—not only credited, but exulted in. Tell me the name of your tale-maker, Lady Kingsland, and permit me to wish you good-evening."

"Everard!" his sister cried, in agony.

But he cut her short with an impatient wave of his hand.

"Hush, Mildred; let my mother speak."

"I have nothing to say." She stood haughtily before him, and they looked each other full in the face, mother and son. "My tale-maker is the whole town. You can not punish them all, Sir Everard. There is truth in this story, or it never would have originated; and he has written to her—that is beyond a doubt. He had told it himself, and shown her reply."

"It is as false as hell!" His eyes blazed like coals of fire. "My wife is as pure as the angels, and any one who dares doubt that purity, even though it be the mother who bore me, is my enemy to the death!"

He dashed out of the house, mounted Sir Galahad, and rode away as if Satan and his hosts were after him.

"Mamma! mamma!" Mildred cried, in unutterable reproach, "what have you done?"

"Told him the truth, child. It is better he should know it, although that knowledge parts us forever."

Like a man gone mad the young baronet galloped home. The sickly glimmer of the fitful moon shone on a face that would never be more ghastly in his coffin—on strained eyes and compressed lips. It seemed to him but an instant from the time he quitted The Grange until he dashed up the avenue at Kingsland, leaped off his foaming bay, and strode into the house. Straight to his wife's room he went, fierce, invincible determination in every line of his rigid face.

"She shall tell me all—she shall, by Heaven!" he cried.

He entered her dressing-room—she was, not there; her boudoir—she was not there; her bedroom—it too was empty. He seized the bell and nearly tore it down. Claudine, the maid, looked in with a startled face.

"Where is your mistress?"

The girl gazed round with a bewildered air.

"Is my lady not here, sir? She sent me away over an hour ago. She was lying down in her dressing-room; she said she was ill."

He looked at her for a moment—it was evident she was telling the simple truth.

"Send Miss Silver here."

"I am not sure that Miss Silver is in the house, Sir Everard. I saw her go out with Edwards some time ago but I will go and see."

Claudine departed. Five minutes passed—ten; he stood rigid as stone. Then came steps—hurried, agitated—the footsteps of a man and a woman.

He strode out and confronted them—Edwards, his valet, and Sybilla Silver. Both were dressed as from a recent walk; both wore strangely pale and agitated faces.

Edwards barely repressed a cry at sight of his master.

"What is it?" Sir Everard asked.

The valet looked at Sybilla in blank terror. Miss Silver covered her face with both hands and turned away.

"What is it?" the baronet repeated, in a dull, thick voice. "Where is my wife?"

"Sir Everard, I—I don't know how—she—she is not in the house."

"Where is she?"

"She is—in the grounds."

"Where?"

"In the Beech Walk."

"With whom?"

"With Mr. Parmalee."

There was dead pause. Sybilla clasped her hands and looked imploringly up in his face.

"Don't be angry with us, Sir Everard; we could not help seeing them. I lost a locket, and Edwards came to help me look for it. It was by the merest chance we came upon them in the Beech Walk."

"I am not angry. Did they see you?"

"No, Sir Everard."

"Did you hear what they said?"

"No, Sir Everard; we would not have listened. They were talking; my lady seemed dreadfully agitated, appealing to him as it appeared, while he was cool and indifferent. Just before we came away we saw her give him all the money in her purse. Ah, here she is now! For pity's sake, do not betray us, Sir Everard!"

She flitted away like a swift, noiseless ghost, closely followed by the valet. And an instant later Lady Kingsland wild and pale, and shrouded in a long mantle turned to enter her dressing-room, and found herself face to face with her wronged husband.



CHAPTER XXV.

THE BREAKING OF THE STORM.

She looked at him and recoiled with a cry of dismay. He stood before her so ghastly, so awful, that with a blind, unthinking motion of intense terror she put out both hands as if to keep him off.

"You have reason to fear me!" he said, in a hoarse, unnatural voice. "Wives have been murdered for less than this!"

Sybilla and Edwards heard the ominous words, and looked blankly in each other's faces. They heard no more. The baronet caught his wife's wrist in a grasp of iron, drew her into the dressing-room, and closed the door. He stood with his back to it, gazing at her, his blue eyes filled with lurid rage.

"Where have you been?"

He asked the question in a voice more terrible from its menacing calm than any wild outburst of fury.

"In the Beech Walk," she answered, promptly.

"With whom?"

"With Mr. Parmalee."

Her glance never fell. She looked at him proudly, unquailingly, full in the face. The look in his flaming eyes, the tone of his ominous voice, were bitterly insulting, and with insult her imperious spirit rose.

"And you dare stand before me—you dare look me in the face," he said, "and tell me this?"

"I dare!" she said, proudly. "You have yet to learn what I dare do, Sir Everard Kingsland!"

She drew herself up in her beauty and her pride, erect and defiant. Her long hair fell loose and unbound, her face was colorless as marble; but her dark eyes were flashing with anger and wounded pride, and at her brightest she had never looked more beautiful than she did now.

"So beautiful and so lost!" he said, bitterly. "So utterly deceitful and depraved! Surely what they tell of her mother must be true. The taint of dishonor is in the blood!"

The change was instantaneous. The pallor of her face turned to a burning red. She clasped her hands with a sudden spasm over her heart.

"My mother!" she gasped. "What do you say of her?"

"What they say of you—that she was a false and wicked wife. Deny it if you can."

"No," she said, with an imperial gesture of scorn, "I deny nothing. If my husband can believe such a vile slander of his wife of a month, let it be. I scorn to deny what he credits so easily."

"I am afraid it would tax even your invention, my lady, to deny these very plain facts. I leave you in your room, too ill to leave it, too ill by far to ride with me to my mother's, but not too ill to get up and meet your lover—shall I say it, madame?—clandestinely in the Beech Walk as soon as I am gone! You should be a little more careful, madame, and make sure before you hold those confidential tete-a-tetes, that the servants are not listening and looking on. Lady Kingsland and Mr. Parmalee are the talk of the county already. To-night's meeting will be a last bonne bouche added to the spicy dish of scandal."

"Have you done?" she said, whiter than ashes. "Have you any more insults to offer?"

"Insults!" the baronet repeated, hoarse with passion. "You do well, madame, to talk of insults—lost, fallen creature that you are! You have dishonored an honorable name; betrayed a husband who loved and trusted you with all his heart; blighted and ruined his life; covered him with disgrace! And you stand there and talk of insult! I have loved you as man never loved woman before, but God help you, Harriet Kingsland, if I had a pistol now!"

She fell down on her knees before him.

"Kill me!" she cried. "I am here at your feet—have mercy and stab me to the heart, but do not drive me mad with your horrible reproaches! May God forgive me if I have brought dishonor upon you, for I never meant it! Never—never—so help me Heaven!"

"Rise, madame! Kneel to Him who will judge you for your baseness; it is too late to kneel to me! Oh, great God! to think how I have loved this woman, and how bitterly she has deceived me!"

The unutterable agony of his tone to her dying day Harriet Kingsland might never forget.

"I loved her and I trusted her! I would have died to save her one hour of pain, and this is my reward! Dishonored—disgraced—my life blighted—my heart broken—deceived from first to last!"

"No, no, no!" she shrieked aloud. "I swear it to you, Everard! I am guiltless! By all my hopes of heaven, I am your true, your faithful, your loving wife!"

He turned and looked up at her in white amaze. Truth, that no living being could doubt, was stamped in agony on that upturned, beautiful face.

"Hear me, Everard!" she cried—"my own beloved husband! I met this man to-night because he holds a secret I am sworn to keep, and that places me in his power. But, by all that is high and holy, I have told you the simple truth about him! I never saw him in all my life until I saw him that day in the library. I have never set eyes on him since, except for an hour to-night. Oh, believe me, Everard or I shall die here at your feet!"

"And you never wrote to him?" he asked.

"Never—never!"

"Nor he to you?"

"Once—the scrawl you saw Sybilla Silver fetch me. I never wrote—I never sent him even a message."

"No? How, then, came you two to meet to-night?"

"He wished to see me—to extort money from me for the keeping of this secret—and he sent word by Sybilla Silver. My answer was, 'I will be in the Beech Walk at eight tonight. If he wishes to see me let him come to me there.'"

"Then you own to have deliberately deceived me? The pretended headache was—a lie?"

"No; it was true. It aches still, until I am almost blind with the pain. Oh, Everard, be merciful! Have a little pity for me, for I love you, and I am the most wretched creature alive!"

"You show your love in a singular way, my Lady Kingsland. It is not by keeping guilty secrets from your husband—by meeting other men by night and by stealth in the grounds—that you are to convince me of your love. Tell me what this mystery means. I command you, by your wifely obedience, tell me this secret at once!"

"I can not!"

"You mean you will not."

"I can not."

"It is a secret of guilt and of shame? Tell me the truth?"

"It is; but the guilt is not mine. The shame—the bitter shame—and the burning expiation, God help me, are!"

"And you refuse to tell me?"

"Everard, I have sworn!" she cried out, wildly. "Would you have me break a death-bed oath?"

"I would have you break ten thousand such oaths," he exclaimed, "when they stand between you and your husband! Harriet Hunsden, your dead father was a villain!"

She sprung to her feet—she had been kneeling all this time—and confronted him like a Saxon pythoness. Her great gray eyes actually flashed fire.

"Go!" she cried. "Leave me this instant! Were you ten times my husband, you should never insult the memory of the best, the noblest, the most devoted of fathers! I will never forgive you the words you have spoken until my dying day!"

"You forgive!" he retorted, with sneering scorn, stung out of all generosity. "Forgiveness is no word for such lips as yours, Lady Kingsland! Keep your guilty secret, or your father's or your mother's, whosoever it may be; but not as my wife! No, madame! when the world begins to point the finger of scorn, through her own evil-doing, at the woman I have married, then from that hour she is no longer my wife. The law of divorce shall free you and your secrets together; but until that freedom comes, I command you to meet this man no more! On your peril you write to him, or speak to him, or meet him again. If you do, by the living Lord, I will murder you both!"

He dashed out of the room like a man gone mad, leaving her standing petrified in the middle of the floor.

One instant she stood, the room heaving, the walls rocking around her; then, with a low, moaning cry, she tottered blindly forward and fell like a stone to the floor.

The storm burst at midnight. A gale surged through the trees with a noise like thunder; the rain fell in torrents. And while rain and wind beat tempestuously over the earth and the roaring sea, the husband paced up and down the library, with clinched teeth and locked hands and death-like face—for the time utterly mad—and the wife lay alone in her luxuriant room, deaf and blind to the tempest, in a deep swoon.



CHAPTER XXVI.

"THE PERSON IN LONDON."

The February day was closing in London in a thick, clammy, yellow fog. No keen frost, no sparkling stars brightened the chill spring twilight; the sky, where it could be seen, was of a uniform leaden tint, the damp mist wet you to the bone, and a long, lamentable blast whistled around the corners and pierced chillingly through the thickest wraps, and passengers strode through the greasy black mud with surly faces and great-coats and the inevitable London umbrella.

At the window of a dull and dirty little lodging a woman sat, in this dark gloaming, gazing out at the passers-by. The house had a perpetual odor of onions and cabbage and dinner, as it is in the nature of such houses to have, and the room, "first floor front," was in the last stage of lodging-house shabbiness and discomfort.

The woman was quite alone—a still, dark figure sitting motionless by the grimy window. She might have been carved in stone, so still she sat—so still she had sat for more than two hours.

Her dress was black, of the poorest sort, frayed and worn, and she shivered under a threadbare shawl drawn close around her shoulders. Yet, in spite of poverty and sickness, and despair and middle age, the woman was beautiful still, with a dark and haggard and wild sort of beauty that would have haunted one to one's dying day.

In her youth, and her first freshness and innocence, she must have been lovely as a dream; but that loveliness was all gone now.

The listless hands lay still, the great, glittering dark eyes stared blankly at the dingy houses opposite, at the straggling pedestrians, at the thickening gloom. The short February day was almost night now, the street-lamps flared yellow and dull athwart the clammy fog.

"Another day," the woman murmured, "another endless day of sick despair gone. Alone and dying—the most miserable creature on the wide earth. Oh, great God, who didst forgive Magdalene, have a little pity on me!"

A spasm of fierce anguish crossed her face for an instant, fading away, and leaving the hopeless despair more hopeless than before.

"I am mad, worse than mad, to hope as I do. She will never look upon my guilty face—she so pure, so stainless, so sweet—how dare I ask it? Oh, what happy women there are in the world! Wives who love and are beloved, and are faithful to the end! And I—think how I drag on living with all that makes life worth having gone forever, while those happy ones, whose lives are one blissful dream, are torn by death from all who love them. To think that I once had a husband, a child, a home; to think what I am now—to think of it, and not to go mad!"

She laid her face against the cold glass with a miserable groan. "Have pity on me, oh, Lord! and let me die!"

There was a rush of carriage-wheels without, a hansom cab whirled up to the door, and a tall young man leaped out. Two minutes more and the tall young man burst impetuously into the dark room.

"All alone, Mrs. Denover," called a cheery voice, "and all in the dark? Darkness isn't wholesome—too conducive to low spirits and the blue devils. Halloo! Jane Anne, idol of my young affections, bring up the gas."

He leaned over the greasy baluster, shouting into the invisible regions below, and was answered promptly enough by a grimy maid-servant with a flickering dip-candle.

"'Tain't my fault, nor yet missis's," said this grimy maid. "Mrs. Denover will sit in the dark, which I've——"

"That will do, Jane Anne," taking the dip and unceremoniously cutting her short. "Vamoose! evaporate! When I want you I'll sing out."

He re-entered the room and placed the candle on the table. The woman had risen, and stood with both hands clasped over her heart, a wild, gleaming, eager light in her black eyes. But she strove to restrain herself.

"I am glad to see you back, Mr. Parmalee," she said. "I have been expecting you for the last two days."

"And wearing yourself to skin and bone, as I knew you would, with your fidgets. What's the good of taking on so? I told you I'd come back as quick as I could, and I've done so. It ain't my fault that the time's been so long—it's Lady Kingsland's."

"You have seen her?"

"That I have. And very well worth seeing she is, I tell you. She's as handsome as a picture, though not so handsome as you must have been at her age, either, Mrs. Denover. And she says she'll see you."

"Oh, thank God!"

The woman tottered hack and sunk into a chair.

"That's right," said Mr. Parmalee; "take a seat, and let us talk it all over at our ease."

He took one himself, not in the ordinary fashion, but with his face to the back, his arms crossed over it, and his long legs twisted scientifically round the bottom.

"I've seen him, and I've seen her," said the photographer, "and a finer-looking couple ain't from here to anywhere. And as the Lord made 'em, He matched 'em for an all-fired prouder pair you couldn't meet in a summer-day's walk."

"She comes of a proud race," the woman murmured, feebly. "The Hunsdens are of the best and oldest stock in England."

"And she's a thorough-bred, if ever there was a thorough-bred one yet, and blood will show in a woman as well as a horse. Yes, she's proud, she's handsome and dreadful cut up, I can tell you, at the news I brought her."

The woman covered her face with her hands with a low moan. Mr. Parmalee composedly went on:

"She knew your picture the minute she clapped eyes on it. I was afraid she might holler, as you wimmin do, at the sight, and her husband and another young woman were present, but she's got grit, that girl, the real sort. She turns round, by George! and gives me such a look—went through me like a carving-knife—and gets up without a word and walks away. And she never sent for me nor asked a question about it, although I mentioned you gave it to me, until I forced her to it, and after that no one need talk to me about the curiosity of the fair sex."

"Does her husband know?"

"No; and he's as jealous as a Turk. I wrote her a note—just a line—and sent it by that other young woman I spoke of, and what does he do but come to me like a roaring lion, and like to pummel my innards out! I owe him one for that, and I'll pay him off, too. I had to send again to my lady before she would condescend to see me, but when she did, I must say she behaved like a trump. She gave me thirty sovereigns plump down, promised me three hundred pounds, and told me to fetch you along. It ain't as much as I expected to make in this speculation; but, on the whole, I consider it a pretty tolerable fair stroke of business."

"Thank God!" the woman whispered, "thank God! I shall see my lost darling once before I die!"

"Now don't you go and take on, Mrs. Denover," observed Mr. Parmalee, "or you'll use yourself up, you know, and then you won't be able to travel to-morrow. And after to-morrow, and after you see your—— Well, my lady, there's the other little trip back to Uncle Sam's domains you've got to make; for you ain't a-going to stay in England and pester that poor young lady's life out?"

"No," said Mrs. Denover, mournfully—"no, I will never trouble her again. Only let me see her once more, and I will go back to my native land and wait until the merciful God sends me death."

"Oh, pooh!" said the artist; "don't you talk like that—it kind of makes my flesh creep, and there ain't no sense in it. There's Aunt Deborah, down to our section—you remind me of her—she was always going on so, wishing she was in heaven, or something horrid, the whole time. It's want of victuals more than anything else. You haven't had any dinner, I'll be bound!"

"No; I could not eat."

"Nor supper?"

"No: I never thought of it."

Mr. Parmalee got up, and was out of the room and hanging over the baluster in a twinkling.

"Here you, Jane Anne!"

Jane Anne appeared.

"Fetch up supper and look sharp—supper for two. Go 'round the corner and get us some oysters and a pint of port, and fetch up some baked potatoes and hot mutton chops—and quick about it."

"Now, then," said Mr. Parmalee, reappearing, "I've dispatched the slavery for provisions, and you've got to eat when they come. I won't have people living on one meal a day, and wishing they were in heaven, when I'm around."

"I will do whatever you think best, Mr. Parmalee," she said, humbly. "You have been very good to me."

"I know it," said Mr. Parmalee. "I always do the polite thing with your sex. My mother was a woman. She's down in Maine now, and can churn and milk eight cows, and do chores, and make squash pie. Oh! them squash pies of my old lady's require to be eat to be believed in; and, for her sake, I always take to elderly female parties in distress. Here's the forage. Come in, Jane Anne, beloved of my soul, and dump 'em down and go."

Jane Anne did.

"Now, Mrs. Denover, you sit right up and fall to. Here's oysters, and here's mutton chops, raging hot, and baked potatoes—delicious to look at. And here's a glass of port wine, and you've got to drink it without a whimper. Mind what I told you; you don't budge a step to-morrow unless you eat a hearty supper to-night."

"You are very good to me," Mrs. Denover repeated. "What would have become of me but for you?"

She strove to eat and drink to please him and to sustain her feeble strength, but every morsel seemed to choke her. She pushed away her plate at last and looked at him imploringly.

"I can not eat another mouthful. Indeed I would if I could. I have no appetite at all of late."

"That's plain to be seen. Well, if you can't, you can't, of course. And now, as it's past nine, the best thing you can do is to go to bed at once."

With the same humility she had evinced throughout, the woman obeyed at once. Mr. Parmalee, left alone, sat over his oysters and his port, luxuriating in the thirty sovereigns in the present and the three hundred pounds in the prospective.

"It's been an uncommon good investment," he reflected, "and knocks the photograph business into a cocked hat. Then there's Sybilla—she goes with the bargain, too. Three hundred pounds and a handsome, black-eyed wife. I wish she hadn't such a devil of a temper. I'll take her home to the farm, and if mother doesn't break her in she'll be the first she ever failed with."

Mr. Parmalee retired betimes, slept soundly, and was up in the gray day-dawn. Breakfast, piping hot, smoked on the table when Mrs. Denover appeared.

"Eat, drink and be merry," said Mr. Parmalee. "Go in and win. Try that under-done steak, and don't took quite so much like the ghost of Hamlet's father, if you can help it."

The woman tried with touching humility to please him, and did her best, but that best was a miserable failure.

A cab came for them in half an hour, and whirled them off on the first stage of their journey.

In the golden light of the spring afternoon Mr. Parmalee made his appearance again at the Blue Bell Inn, with a veiled lady, all in black, hanging on his arm.

"This here lady is my maiden aunt, come over from the State of Maine to see your British institutions," Mr. Parmalee said, in fluent fiction, to the obsequious landlady. "She's writing a book, and she'll mention the Blue Bell favorably in it. Her name is Miss Hepzekiah Parmalee. Let her have your best bedroom and all the luxuries this hotel affords, and I will foot the bill."

He lighted a cigar and sallied forth.

"Miss Hepzekiah Parmalee" dined alone in her own room; then sat by the window, with white face and strained eyes, waiting for Mr. Parmalee's return.

It was almost dark when he came. He entered hurriedly, flushed and excited.

"Fortune favors us this bout, Mrs. Denover," he said, "I've met an old chum down on the wharf yonder—a countryman—and I'd as soon have expected to find the President of the United States in this little one-horse town. His name's Davis—Captain Davis, of the schooner 'Angelina Dobbs'—and he's going to sail for Southampton this very night. There's a streak of luck. A free passage for you and for me up to Southampton to-night."

"But my—Lady Kingsland?" she faltered.

"I've made that all right, too. I met one of the flunkies and sent word to Sybilla that we were here, and that she'd better see us at once. I expect an answer every—— Ah, by George! speak of the—here she is!"

It was Miss Sybilla Silver, sailing gracefully down the street. Mr. Parmalee darted out and met her—superbly handsome, her dark cheeks flushed with some inward excitement, her black eyes gleaming with strange fire.

"Is she here?" she breathlessly asked.

Mr. Parmalee nodded toward the window.

Sybilla gazed up a moment at the pale, haggard face.

"They are alike," she said, under her breath—"mother and daughter—and that face is scarcely more haggard than the other now. We have had a dreadful quarrel, Mr. Parmalee, since you left, up at the Court."

"Want to know about me?"

"Partly. About the secret—about that meeting in the Beech Walk. He absolutely threatened her life."

"Should like to have been there to hear him," said Mr. Parmalee. "It would be paying off old scores a little. How did she take it?"

"She fainted. Her maid found her in a dead swoon next morning. She did not tell Sir Everard, by my advice; he would have been for making it up directly. They have not met since—my doing, too. He thinks she is sulking in her room. He is half mad to be reconciled—to make a fool of himself, asking pardon, and all that—but I have taken good care he shall not. He thinks she is obstinate and sullen; she thinks he is full of nothing but rage and revenge. It is laughable to manage them."

"Fun to you, but death to them," observed the artist. "You are flinty, Sybilla, and no mistake. I'm pretty hard myself, but I couldn't torment folks like that in cold blood. It's none of my business, however, and I don't care how high you pile the agony on him. Did you tell her the elderly party was here?"

"Yes. She has not left her room for three days. She is the shadow of her former self, and she was dreadfully agitated upon hearing it; but she answered, firmly, 'I will see her, and at once. I will meet her to-night.' I asked where, and then, for the first time, she was at a loss."

"The Beech Walk," suggested the artist.

"The Beech Walk is watched. Sir Everard's spies are on the lookout. No—I know a better place. The young plantation slopes down to the very water's edge; the shrubbery is thick and dense, the spot gloomy; no one ever goes there. You can come by water and fetch her in the boat. Land on the shore under the stone terrace, about midnight, and my lady will meet you there."

"And you, Sybilla? The old lady and me, we sail at the turn of the tide for Southampton, to take passage for America. I suppose you hain't forgotten your promise?"

"Is it likely, George? I will follow you to America and we will be married there. It is impossible for me to go with you now. You can wait a couple of months, can you not?"

"But—"

"You must wait, George. I love you, and I will follow you and be your true and devoted wife. But you must wait a little. Say you agree, and let us part until we meet again—where? In New York?"

"I suppose so," Mr. Parmalee responded, gruffly. "You're boss in this business, it seems, and I've got to do as you say. But it's hard on a fellow; I calk'lated on taking you over with me."

"Would you have me go to you penniless? I will come to you with a fortune. Believe me, trust me, and wait. You will be on the stone terrace at twelve to-night?"

"She will," said the American. "I'll wait in the boat. 'Tain't likely they want me to be present at their interview. Just remind my lady to fetch along the three hundred pounds, and don't let her fail to come. I want to sail in the 'Angelina Dobbs' to-night."

"She will not fail. She will come."

Her eyes blazed up with a lurid fire as she said it.

"She will be there," she said, "and she shall fetch the three hundred pounds. Do you not fail!"

"I will not. Will you be there, too, Sybilla?"

"I? Of course not. There is no need of me."

"Then we say good-bye here?"

"Yes. Good-bye until we meet in New York."

"I will write to you from there," he said, wringing her hand. "Good-bye, Sybilla! I will be at the trysting-place to-night. Be sure the other party is, too."

"Without fail. Adieu, and—forever!"

She waved her hand and flitted away, uttering the last word under her breath.

Mr. Parmalee watched her out of sight, heaved a heavy sigh, and went back to the house.

Swiftly Sybilla Silver fluttered along in the chill evening wind, her face to the sunset sky. But not the pale luster of that February sunset lighted her dark face with that lurid light—the flame burned within. Two fierce red spots blazed on either cheek: her eyes glowed like living coals; her hands were clinched under her shawl.

"She will be there," she whispered, under her breath—"she will be there, but she never will return. By the wrongs of the dead, by the vengeance I have sworn, this night shall be her last on earth. And he shall pay the penalty—my oath will be kept, the astrologer's prediction fulfilled, and Zenith the gypsy avenged!"



CHAPTER XXVII.

"HAVE YOU PRAYED TO-NIGHT, DESDEMONA?"

The sun went down—a fierce and wrathful sunset. Black and brazen yellow flamed in the western sky; the sea lay glassy and breathless; the wind came in fitful gusts until the sun went down, and then died out in dead and ominous calm; night fell an hour before its time.

My lady sat by her chamber window, looking out at black sea and blacker sky. Exquisite pictures, wonderful bric-a-brac treasures, inlaid tables and cabinets, richest carpets and curtains, and chairs that were like ivory touched up with gold, made the room a miracle of beauty.

But my lady herself, sitting alone amid the rose-colored curtains, looking blankly out at the menacing sky, wore a face as dark as that sky itself. She had wasted to a shadow; dark circles under her hollow eyes told of sleepless nights and wretched days; her cheeks were haggard, her lips bloodless.

The white morning-dress she still wore clung loosely around her wasted figure; all the bright hair was pushed impatiently off her face and confined in a net.

No one who had seen Harrie Hunsden, radiant as Hebe, blooming as Venus, daring as Diana, at the memorable fox-hunt of a little more than a year ago, would ever have recognized this haggard, pallid, wretched-looking Lady Kingsland as the same.

She sat still and alone, gazing out at the dreary desolation of earth and heaven. The great house was still as a tomb; the bustle of the servants' regions was far removed, the gnawing of a mouse behind the black paneling, the soft ticking of the toy clock sounded unnaturally loud.

"Darkening," Harriet thought, looking at the leaden twilight—"darkening, like my life. Not two months a wife, and his love and trust gone forever. May Heaven pity me, for there is none on earth!"

There was a tap at the door. Lady Kingsland had learned to know that soft, light tap.

"Come in," she said; and Sybilla entered.

She did not pause at the closed door as usual; she glided noiselessly across the room and stood beside her. So like a ghost she came, her dead-black garments making no rustle, her footfall making no sound, her white face awfully corpse-like in the spectral light, her black eyes glowing like a cat's in the dark; my lady shrunk in absolute affright.

"Don't come any nearer!" she cried, putting out her hands. "What do you want?"

"I have seen Mr. Parmalee, my lady."

Her tones were the same as usual—respectful. But the gentle voice did not reassure Lady Kingsland.

"Well?" she said, coldly.

"He will be there, my lady. At half past eleven to-night you will find—your mother"—slowly and distinctly—"waiting for you on the terrace down by the shore."

"Half past eleven. Why so very late?"

"My lady, it will not be safe for you to venture out before. You are watched!"

"Watched!" she repeated, haughtily. "Do you mean, Sybilla Silver—"

"I mean, my lady," Miss Silver said, firmly, "Sir Everard has set spies. The Beech Walk is watched by night and by day. Claudine is little better than a tool in the hands of Edwards, the valet, with whom she is in love. She tells everything to Edwards, and Edwards repeats to his master. A quarter past eleven all will be still—the household will have retired—you may venture forth in safety. The night will be dark, the way lonely and dismal; but you know it every inch. On the stone terrace, at half past eleven, you will find—your mother awaiting you. You can talk to her in perfect safety, and for as long as you choose."

"Have you seen her?" she asked.

"At the window of the Blue Belt Inn—yes, my lady. It is very rash for her to expose herself, too, for hers is a face to strike attention at once, if only for the wreck of its beauty, and for its unutterable look of despair. But as she leaves again soon, I dare say nothing will come of it."

"When do they leave?"

"To-night. It appears a friend of Mr. Parmalee is captain of a little vessel down in the harbor, and he sails for Southampton at the turn of the tide—somewhere past midnight. It is a very convenient arrangement for all parties. By the by, Mr. Parmalee told me to remind you, my lady, of the three hundred pounds."

"Mr. Parmalee is impertinent. I need no reminder. Have you anything more to say, Miss Silver?"

"Only this, my lady: the servants' entrance on the south side of the house will be the safest way for you to take, and the nearest. If you dread the long, dark walk, my lady, I will be only too happy to accompany you."

"You are very good. I don't in the least dread it. When I wish you to accompany me anywhere I will say so."

Sybilla bowed, and the darkness hid a sinister smile.

"You have no orders for me, then, my lady?"

"None. Yes, you had better see Claudine, and say I shall not require her services to-night. Inform me when the servants have all retired, and"—a momentary hesitation, but still speaking proudly—"does Sir Everard dine at home this evening?"

"Sir Everard just rode off as I came in, my lady. He dines with Major Morrell and the officers, and will not return until past midnight, very likely. He is always late at those military dinners."

"That will do; you may go."

"Shall I not light the lamp, my lady?"

"No; be good enough to leave me."

Sybilla quitted the room, her white teeth, set together in a viperish clinch.

"How she hates me, and how resolved she is to show it! Very well, my lady. You don't hate me one thousandth part as much as I hate you; and yet my hatred of you is but a drop in the ocean compared to my deadly vengeance against your husband. Go, my haughty Lady Kingsland—go to your tryst—go to your death!"

Left alone, Harriet sat in the deepening darkness for over three hours, never moving—still and motionless as if turned to stone.

The pretty Swiss clock played a waltz preparatory to striking eleven. She sat and listened until the last musical chime died away; then she rose, groped her way to the low, marble chimney-piece, struck a lucifer, and lighted a large lamp.

The brilliant light flooded the room. Sybilla's rap came that same instant softly upon the door.

"My lady."

"I hear," my lady said, not opening it. "What is it?"

"All have retired; the house is as still as the grave. The south door is unfastened; the coast is clear."

"It is well. Good-night."

"Good-night."

She stood a moment listening to the soft rustle of Miss Silver's skirts in the passage, then, slowly and mechanically, she began to prepare for her night's work.

She took a long, shrouding mantle, wrapped it around her, drew the hood over her head, and exchanged her slippers for stout walking shoes. Then she unlocked her writing-case and drew forth a roll of bank-notes, thrust them into her bosom, and stood ready.

But she paused an instant yet. She stood before one of the full-length mirrors, looking at her spectral face, so hollow, so haggard, out of which all the youth and beauty seemed gone.

"And this is what one short month ago he called bright and beautiful—this wasted, sunken-eyed vision. Youth and beauty, love and trust and happiness, home and husband, all lost. Oh, my father, what have you done?"

She gave one dry, tearless sob. The clock struck the quarter past. The sound aroused her.

"My mother," she said—"let me think I go to meet my mother. Sinful, degraded, an outcast, but still my mother. Let me think of that, and be brave."

She opened her door; the stillness of death reigned. She glided down the corridor, down the sweeping stair-way, the soft carpeting muffling every tread—the dim night-lamps lighting her on her way.

No human sound startled her. All in the house were peacefully asleep—all save that flying figure, and one other wicked watcher. She gained the door in safety. It yielded to her touch. She opened it, and was out alone in the black, gusty night.

Harriet Kingsland's brave heart quailed only for a moment; then she plunged resolutely forward into the gloom. Slipping, stumbling, falling, rising again, the wind beating in her face, the branches catching like angry hands at her garments—still she hurried on. It was a long, long, tortuous path, but it came to an end. The roar of the sea sounded awfully loud as it rose in sullen majesty, the flags of the stone terrace rang under her feet. Panting, breathless, cold as death, she leaned against the iron railing, her hands pressed hard over her tumultuous heart.

It was light here. A fitful midnight moon, pale and feeble, was breaking through a rift in the clouds, and shedding its sickly glimmer over the black earth and raging sea. To her eyes, accustomed to the dense darkness, every object was plainly visible. She strained her gaze over the waves to catch the coming boat she knew was to bear those she had come to meet; she listened breathlessly to every sound. But for a weary while she listened, and watched, and waited in vain. What was that? A footstep crashing through the under-wood near at hand. She turned with a wordless cry of terror. A tall, dark figure emerged from the trees and strode straight toward her. An awful voice spoke:

"I swore by the Lord who made me I would murder you if you ever came again to meet that man. False wife, accursed traitoress, meet your doom!"

She uttered a long, low cry. She recognized the voice—it was the voice of her husband; she recognized the form—her husband's—towering over her, with a long, gleaming dagger in his hand.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

ON THE STONE TERRACE.

When Sybilla Silver parted from Lady Kingsland outside the chamber door, she went straight to her own room, and began her preparations for that night's work.

The flaming red spots, all foreign to her usual complexion, blazed on either cheek-bone; her black eyes shone like the eyes of a tigress crouched in a jungle.

But she never faltered—she never wavered in her deadly purpose. The aim of her whole life was to be fulfilled this night—the manes of her dead kinsfolk to be appeased.

Her first act was to sit down and write a note. It was very brief, illy spelled, vilely written, on a sheet of coarsest paper, and sealed with a big blotch of red wax and the impress of a grimy thumb. This is what Miss Silver wrote:

SUR HEVERARD KINGSLAND:

HONURED SIR:—This is to Say that my Lady is Promised the hamerican Gent, for to meet him this Night at Midnight on the Stone Terrace, Which honoured Sir you ought to Know, which is why I write.

Yours too Command, A FRIEND.

"This will do it, I think. Sir Everard will visit the stone terrace to-night before he sleeps. It will be fully eleven, probably half past, before be comes home. He will find this anonymous communication awaiting him. He will fume and stamp and spurn it, but he will go, all the same. And then!"

She sealed the note, directed it in the same atrocious fist to the baronet, and then, rising, proceeded to undress.

But not to go to bed. A large bundle lay on a chair; she opened it, drew forth a full suit of man's attire—an evening suit that the young baronet had worn but a few times, and the very counterpart of that which he wore to-night.

Miss Silver stood before the glass and arrayed herself in these. She was so tall that they fitted her very well, and when her long hair was scientifically twisted up, and a hat of Sir Everard's crushed down upon it, she was as handsome a young fellow as you could see in a long day's search.

That vague and shadowy resemblance to the baronet, which Mr. Parmalee had once noticed, was very palpable and really striking when she threw over all a long riding-cloak which Sir Everard often wore.

"You will do, I think," she said, to her transformed image in the glass. "Even my lady might mistake you for her husband in the uncertain moonlight."

She left the mirror, crossed the room, unlocked a trunk with a key she took out of her bosom, and drew forth a morocco scabbard case. The crest of the Kingslands and the monogram "E. K.," decorated the leather.

Opening this, she drew forth a long, glittering Spanish stiletto, not much thicker than a coarse needle, but strong and glittering and deadly keen.

"Sir Everard has not missed his pretty toy yet," she muttered. "If he had only dreamed, when he saw it first, not a fortnight ago, of the deed it would do this night!"

She closed the trunk, thrust the dagger into its scabbard, the scabbard into her bosom, blew out the lamp, and softly opened the door. All was still as the grave.

She locked her door securely, put the key in her pocket, and stole toward Sir Everard's rooms. Her kid slippers fell light as snow-flakes on the carpet. She opened the baronet's dressing-room door. It had been his sleeping-room, too, of late. His bed stood ready prepared; a lamp burned dimly on the dressing-table. Beside the lamp Miss Silver placed her anonymous letter, then retreated as noiselessly as she had entered, shut the door, and glided stealthily down the corridor, down the stairs, along the passages, and out of the same door which my lady had passed not ten minutes previously.

Swift as a snake, and more deadly of purpose, Sybilla glided along the gloomy avenues of the wood toward the sea-side terrace. Every nerve seemed strung like steel, every fiber of her body quivered to its utmost tension. Her eyes blazed in the dark like the eyes of a wild cat; she looked like a creature possessed of a devil.

She reached the extremity of the woodland path almost as soon as her victim. A moment she paused, glaring upon her with eyes of fiercest hate as she stood there alone and defenseless. The next, she drew out the flashing stiletto. Flung away the scabbard, and advanced with it in her hand and horrible words upon her lips.

"I swore by the Lord who made me I would murder you if you ever came again to meet that man! False wife, accursed traitoress, meet your doom!"

There was a wild shriek. In that fitful light she never doubted for a moment but that it was her husband.

"Have mercy!" she cried. "I am innocent, Everard! Oh, for God's sake, do not murder me!"

"Wretch—traitoress—die. You are not fit to pollute the earth longer! Go to your grave with my hate and my curse!"

With a sudden paroxysm of mad fury the dagger was lifted—one fierce hand gripped Harriet's throat. A choking shriek—the dagger fell—a gurgling cry drowned in her throat—a fierce spurt of hot blood—a reel backward and a heavy fall over the low iron railing—down, down on the black shore beneath—and the pallid moonlight gleaming above shone on one figure standing on the stone terrace, alone, with a dagger dripping blood in its hand.

She leaned over the rail. Down below—far down—she could see a slender figure, with long hair blowing in the blast, lying awfully still on the sands. Not five feet off the great waves washed, rising, steadily rising. In five minutes more they would wash the feet of the terrace—that slender figure would lie there no more.

"The fall alone would have killed her. Before I am half-way back to the house those waves will be her shroud."

She wrapped her cloak around her and fled away—back, swift as the wind, into the house, up the stairs. Safe in her own room, she tore off her disguise. The cloak and the trousers were horribly spotted with blood. She made all into one compact package, rolled up the dagger in the bundle, stole back to the baronet's dressing-room and listened, and peeped through the key-hole. He was not there; the room was empty. She went in, thrust the bundle out of sight in the remotest corner of the wardrobe, and hastened back to her chamber. Her letter still lay where she had left it. The baronet bad not yet returned.

In her own room Miss Silver secured the door upon the inside, according to custom, donned her night-dress, and went to bed—to watch and wait.

* * * * *

The mess dinner was a very tedious affair to one guest at least. Major Morrell and the officers told good stories and sung doubtful songs, and passed the wine and grew hilarious; but Sir Everard Kingsland chafed horribly under it all, and longed for the hour of his release.

A dull, aching torture lay at his heart; a chill presentiment of evil had been with him all day; the tortures of love and rage and jealousy had lashed him nearly into madness.

Sometimes love carried all before him, and he would start up to rush to the side of the wife he loved, to clasp her to his heart, and defy earth and Hades to part them. Sometimes anger held the day, and he would pace up and down like a madman, raging at her, at himself, at Parmalee, at all the world.

He was haggard and worn and wild, and his friends stared at him and shrugged their shoulders, and smiled significantly at this outward evidence of post-nuptial bliss.

It was almost midnight when the young baronet mounted Sir Galahad and rode home. Kingsland Court lay dark and still under the frowning night sky. He glanced up at the window of his wife's chamber. A light burned there. A longing, wistful look filled his blue eyes, his arms stretched out involuntarily, his heart gave a great plunge, as though it would break away and fly to its idol.

"My darling!" he murmured, passionately—"my darling, my life, my love, my wife! Oh, my God to think, I should love her, wildly, madly still, believing her—knowing her to be false!"

He went up to his dressing-room, his heart full to bursting. A mad, insane longing to go to her, to fold her to his breast, to forgive her all, to take her, guilty or innocent, and let pride and honor go to the winds, was upon him. He loved her so intensely, so passionately, that life without her, apart from her, was hourly increasing torture.

The sight of a folded note lying on the table alone arrested his excited steps. He took it up, looked at the strange superscription, tore it open, ran over its diabolical contents, and reeled as if struck a blow.

"Great Heaven! it is not true! it can not be true! it is a vile, accursed slander! My wife meet this man alone, and at midnight, in that forsaken spot! Oh, it is impossible! May curses light upon the slanderous coward who dared to write this infernal lie!"

He flung it, in a paroxysm of mad fury, into the fire. A flash of flame, and Sybilla Silver's artfully written note was forever gone. He started up in white fury.

"I will go to her room; I will see for myself! I will find her safely asleep, I know!"

But a horrible misgiving filled him, even while he uttered the brave words. He dashed out of his room and into his wife's. It was deserted. He entered the bedroom. She was not there; the bed had not been slept in. He passed to her boudoir; that, too, was vacant.

Sir Everard seized the bell-rope and rang a peal that resounded with unearthly echoes through the sleeping house. Five minutes of mad impatience—ten; then Claudine, scared and shivering, appeared.

"Where is your mistress?"

"Mon Dieu! how should I know? Is not my lady in bed?"

"No; her bed has not been slept in to-night. She is in none of her rooms. When did you see her last?"

"About ten o'clock. She dismissed me for the night; she said she would undress herself."

"Where is Miss Silver?"

"In bed, I think, monsieur."

"Go to her—tell her I want to see her at once. Lose no time."

Claudine disappeared. Miss Silver was so very soundly asleep that it required five minutes rapping to rouse her. Once aroused, however, she threw on a dressing-gown, thrust her feet into slippers, and appeared before the baronet, with a pale, anxious, inquiring face.

"Where is my wife? Where is Lady Kingsland?"

"Good Heaven! is she not here?"

"No. You know where she is! Tell me, I command you!"

Sybilla Silver covered her face with both hands, and cowered before him with every sign of guilt.

"Spare me!" she cried, faintly. "I dare not tell you!"

He made one stride forward, caught her by the arm, his eyes glaring like the eyes of a tiger.

"Speak!" he thundered; "or by the Heaven above us, I'll tear it from your throat! Is she with him?"

"She is," cowering, shrinking, trembling.

"Where?"

"On the stone terrace."

"How do you know?"

"He returned this afternoon; he sent for me; he told me to tell her to meet him there to-night, about midnight. She did not think you would return before two or three—— Oh, for pity's sake——"

"I'll have their hearts' blood!" he thundered, with an awful oath.

The horrible voice, the horrible oath, was like nothing earthly. The two women cowered down, too intensely frightened even to scream. One other listener recoiled in wordless horror. It was Edwards, the valet.

The madman, goaded to insane fury, had rushed out of the hall—out of the house. The trio looked at each other with bloodless faces and dilated eyes of terror.

Edwards was the first to find his paralyzed tongue:

"May the Lord have mercy upon us! There'll be murder done this night!"

The two women never spoke. Huddled together, they clung to Edwards, as women do cling to men in their hour of fear.

Half an hour passed; they never moved nor stirred.

Ten minutes more, and Sir Everard dashed in among them as he had dashed out.

"It is false!" he shouted—"a false, devilish slander! She is not there!"

A shriek from Claudine—a wild, wild shriek. With starting eyes she was pointing to the baronet's hands.

All looked and echoed that horror-struck cry. They were literally dripping blood!



CHAPTER XXIX.

BRANDED.

The baronet lifted his hands to the light, and gazed at their crimson hue with wild, dilated eyes and ghastly face.

"Blood!" he said, in an awful whisper—"blood—Good God, it is hers! She is murdered!"

The three listeners recoiled still further, paralyzed at the sight, at the words, at the awful thought that a murderer, red-handed, stood before them.

"A horrible deed has been done this night!" he cried, in a voice that rang down the long hall like a bugle blast. "A murder has been committed! Rouse the house, fetch lights, and follow me!"

Edwards rose up, trembling in every limb.

"Quick!" his master thundered. "Is this a time to stand agape? Sybilla, sound the alarm! Let all rise and join in the search."

In a moment all was confusion. Claudine, of a highly excitable temperament, no sooner recovered from her stupor of dismay, then, with a piercing shriek, she fainted and tumbled over in a heap.

But no one heeded her. Bells rang, lights flashed, servants, white and wild, rushed to and fro, and over all the voice of the master rang, giving his orders.

"Lights, lights!" he shouted. "Men, why do you linger and stare? Lights! and follow me to the stone terrace."

He led the way. There was a general rush from the house. The men bore lanterns; the women clung to the men, terror and curiosity struggling, but curiosity getting the better of it. In dead silence all made their way to the stone terrace—all but one.

Sybilla Silver saw them depart, stood a moment, irresolute, then turned and sped away to Sir Everard's dressing-room. She drew the compact bundle of clothes from their corner, removed the dagger, tied up the bundle again with the weight inside, and hurriedly left the house.

"These blood-stained garments are not needed to fix the guilt upon him," she said to herself: "that is done already. The appearance of these would only create confusion and perplexity—perhaps help his cause. I'll destroy these and fling away the dagger in the wood. They'll he sure to find it in a day or two. They will make such a search that if a needle were lost it would be found."

There was an old sunken well, half filled with slimy, green water, mud, and filth, in a remote end of the plantation. Thither, unobserved, Sybilla made her way in the ghostly moonlight and flung her blood-stained bundle into its vile, poisonous depths.

"Lie there!" she muttered. "You have done your work, and I fling you away, as I fling away all my tools at my pleasure. There, in the green muck and slimy filth, you will tell no tales."

She hurried away and struck into a path leading to the stone terrace. She could see the lanterns flashing like firefly sparks; she could hear the clear voice of Sir Everard Kingsland commanding. All at once the lights were still, there was a deep exclamation in the baronet's voice, a wild chorus of feminine screams, then blank silence.

Sybilla Silver threw the dagger, with a quick, fierce gesture, into the wood, and sprung in among them with glistening, greedy black eyes. They stood in a semicircle, in horror-struck silence, on the terrace. The light of half a dozen lanterns streamed redly on the stone flooring, but redder than that lurid light, a great pool of blood lay gory before them. The iron railing, painted creamy white, was all clotted with jets of blood, and clinging to a projecting knob, something fluttered in the bleak blast, but they did not see it. All eyes were riveted on the awful sight before them—every tongue was paralyzed. Edwards, the valet, was the first to break the dreadful silence.

"My master!" he cried, shrilly; "he will fall!"

He dropped his lantern and sprung forward just in time and no more. The young baronet reeled and fell heavily backward. The sight of that blood—the life-blood of his bride—seemed to freeze the very heart in his body. With a low moan he lay in his servant's arms like a dead man.

"He has fainted," said the voice of Sybilla Silver. "Lift him up and carry him to the house."

"Wait!" cried some one. "What is this?"

He tore the fluttering garment off the projection and held it up to the light.

"My lady's Injy scarf!"

No one knew who spoke—all recognized it. It was a little Cashmere shawl Lady Kingsland often wore. Another thrilling silence followed; then—

"The Lord be merciful!" gasped a house-maid. "She's been murdered, and we in our beds!"

Sybilla Silver, leaning lightly against the railing, turned authoritatively to Edwards:

"Take your master to his room, Edwards. It is no use of lingering here now; we must wait until morning. Some awful deed has been done, but it may not be my lady murdered."

"How comes her shawl there, then?" asked the old butler. "Why can't she be found in the house?"

"I don't know. It is frightfully mysterious, but nothing more can be done to-night."

"Can't there?" said the butler. "Jackson and Fletcher will go to the village and get the police and search every inch of the park before daylight. The murderer can't be far away."

"Probably not, Mr. Norris. Do as you please about the police, only if you ever wish your master to recover from that death-like swoon, you will carry him at once to the house and apply restoratives."

She turned away with her loftiest air of hauteur, and Miss Silver had always been haughty to the servants. More than one dark glance followed her now.

"You're a hard one, you are, if there ever was a hard one!" said the butler. "There's been no luck in the house since you first set foot in it."

"She always hated my lady," chimed in a female. "It's my opinion she'll be more glad than sorry if she is made away with. She wanted Sir Everard for herself."

"Hold your tongue, Susan!" angrily cried Edwards. "You daren't call your soul your own if Miss Silver was listening. Bear a hand here, you fellers, and help me fetch Sir Heverard to the house."

They bore the insensible man to the house, to his room, where Edwards applied himself to his recovery. Sybilla aided him silently, skillfully. Meantime, the two gigantic footmen were galloping like mad to the village to rouse the stagnant authorities with their awful news. And the servants remained huddled together, whispering in affright; then, in a body, proceeded to search the house from attic to cellar.

"My lady may be somewhere in the house," somebody had suggested. "Who knows? Let us try."

So they tried, and utterly failed, of course.

Morning came at last. Dull and dreary it came, drenched in rain, the wind wailing desolately over the dark, complaining sea. All was confusion, not only at the Court, but throughout the whole village. The terrible news had flown like wild-fire, electrifying all. My lady was murdered! Who had done the deed?

Very early in the wet and dismal morning, Miss Silver, braving the elements, wended her way to the Blue Bell Inn.

Where was Mr. Parmalee? Gone, the landlady said, and gone for good, nobody knew where.

Sybilla stood and stared at her incredulously. Gone, and without a word to her—gone without seeing the murdered woman! What did it mean?

"Are you sure he has really gone?" she asked. "And how did he go?"

"Sure as sure!" was the landlady's response; "which he paid his bill to the last farthing, like a gentleman. And as for how he went, I am sure I can't say, not being took in his confidence; but the elderly party, she went with him, and it was late last evening."

Miss Silver was nonplused, perplexed, bewildered, and very anxious. What did Mr. Parmalee mean? Where had he gone? He might spoil all yet. She had come to see him, and accuse him of the murder—to frighten him, and make him fly the village. Circumstances were strongly against him—his knowledge of her secret; his nocturnal appointment; her disappearance. Sybilla did not doubt but that he would consider discretion the better part of valor, and fly.

She went back to the house, intensely perplexed. There the confusion was at its height. The scabbard had been found near the terrace, with the baronet's initials thereon.

Men looked into each other's blank faces, afraid to speak the frightful thoughts that filled their minds.

And in his room Sir Everard lay in a deep stupor—it was not sleep. Sybilla, upon the first faint signs of consciousness, had administered a powerful opiate.

"He must sleep," she said, resolutely, to Edwards. "It may save his life and his reason. He is utterly worn out, and every nerve in his body is strung to its utmost tension. Let him sleep, poor fellow!"

He lay before her so death-like, so ghastly, so haggard, that the stoniest enemy might have relented—the pallid shadow of the handsome, happy bridegroom of two short months ago.

"I have kept my oath," she thought. "I have wreaked the vengeance I have sworn. If I left him forever now, the manes of Zenith the gypsy might rest appeased. But the astrologer's prediction—ah! the work must go on to the appalling end."

Early in the afternoon arrived Lady Kingsland and Mildred, in a frightful state of excitement and horror. Harriet murdered! The tragic story had been whispered through The Grange until it reached their ears, thrilling them to the core of their hearts with terror.