kind of life you care to live. Here is a link in
the evidence against you, if suspicion lights upon
you (and it must), which is of incontestable
strength. Here, in Arthur Felton's writing,
is the memoranda of the shares which you
bought, and paid for with Arthur Felton's
money. Stewart! Stewart! are you blind and
mad, indeed, that you stay here, that you let
the precious time escape you, that you dally
with your fate? Let us begone, I say; let
us escape while we may. George Dallas is
not our only foe, not our only danger—
formidable, indeed; but remember, Stewart, Mr.
Felton comes to seek for his son; remember
that we have to dread the man's father!"

The pleading in her voice was agonising in its
intensity, the lustrous excitement in her blue
eyes was painful, the pallor of her face was
frightful. She had clasped her hands round his
arm, and the fingers held him like steel fetters.
He tried to shake off her hold, but she did not
seem aware of the movement.

"I tell you," she continued, " no dream was
ever wilder than your hope of escape, if those
two men come to London and find you here;
no such possibility exists. Let us go; let us
get out of the reach of their power."

"By——, I'll put myself out of Dallas's
reach by a very simple method, if you don't
hold your cursed tongue," said Routh, with
such ferocity that Harriet let go her hold of
him, and shrank as if he had struck her. " If
you don't want me to tell Mr. Felton what has
become of his son, and put him on to George's
trail myself, you'll drop this kind of thing at
once. In fact," he said, with a savage sneer,
"I hardly think a better way out of our infernal
blunder could be found."

"Stewart! Stewart!" She said no more.

"Now listen to me, Harriet," he went on, in
furious anger, but in a suppressed tone. " If
you are anything like the wise woman you
used to be, you won't provoke a desperate
man. Let me alone, I tell you—let me get out
of this as I best can. The worst part of it is
what you have brought upon me. I don't
want George Dallas to come to any serious grief,
if I can help it; but if he threatens danger
to me, he must clear the way, that's all. I
dare say you are very sorry, and all that. You
rather took to Master George lately, believed
in his prudence, and his mother, and all that
kind of thing; but I can't help that. I never
had a turn for sentiment myself; but this you
may be sure of—only gross blundering can bring
anything of the kind about—if any one is to
swing for Deane, it shall be Dallas, and
not I."

A strong shudder shook Harriet's frame as
she heard her husband's words. But she
repressed it, and spoke:

"You refuse to listen to me, then, Stewart.
You will not keep your promise—your promise
which, however vague, I have built upon and
lived upon since we left Homburg? You will
not ' think of ' what I said to you there? Not
though it is a thousand times more important
now? You will not leave this life, and come
away to peace and safety?"

"No, no; a thousand times no!" said Routh,
in the wildest fury. " I will not—I will not!
A life of peace and safety; yes, and a life of
poverty, and you——" he added, in a tone of
bitterest scorn and hatred.

A wonderful look came into the woman's
face, as she heard his cruel and dastardly words.
As the pink had faded into the white upon her
cheeks, so now the white deadened into grey—
into an ashen ghostly grey, and her dry lips
parted slowly, emitting a heavy sigh.

He made a step or two towards the door,
she retreating before him. And when he had
almost reached it, she fell suddenly upon her
knees, and flung her arms round him with
desperate energy.

"Stewart," she said, in a whisper indeed,
yet in a voice to be heard amid a whirlwind,
"my husband, my love, my life, my darling,
don't mind me! Leave me here; it will be
safer, better, less suspicious. Go away, and
leave me. I don't care, indeed. I don't want to
go with you. Go alone, and make sure of your
safety! Stewart, say you'll go—say you'll go!"

While she was speaking, he was striving to
loosen her hold upon him, but in vain. A short
brief warfare was waged in that moment in his
soul. If he softened to her now, if he yielded to
her now, all was undone. And yet what love was
this—what strange, and wondrous, and potent
kind of love was this? Not the kind of love
which had looked at him, an hour or two ago,
out of the rich black eyes of the American
widow, that had trembled in the tones of her
voice. But a vision of the beauty he coveted,
of the wealth he needed, of the freedom he panted
for, rose before Routh's bewildered brain, and
the strife ended. Evil had its own way unchecked
henceforth to the end.

He raised his right arm and struck her
heavily upon the face; the clasp of her hands
gave way, and she sank upon the floor. Then
he stepped over her, as she lay prostrate in the
doorway, and left the room. When she raised
herself, she pushed back her hair, and looked
round, with a dreary amazement upon her
troubled face, and she heard the key turned in
his dressing-room door.

The day had dawned when Harriet Routh
went gently up-stairs to her bedroom. She was
perfectly calm. She opened the window-shutters
and let the light in before she lay down on
her bed. Also, she unlocked a box, which she
took from her wardrobe, and looked carefully
into it, then put it away satisfied. As she closed
her eyes, she said, half aloud, " I can do no
more; but she can save him, and she shall."

At one o'clock on the following day, Harriet
Routh, attired, as usual, in simple but ladylike
dress, and presenting an appearance on which
the most impertinent of pages would not have
dared to cast an imputation, presented herself
at No. 4, Hollington-square, Brompton. Mrs.
Bembridge lived there, but Mrs. Bembridge was