"Is that young man mad?" asked Philip Sheldon, as he went into his study immediately after Valentine had passed him in the hall.

The question was not addressed to any particular individual; and Diana, who was standing near the door by which Mr. Sheldon entered, took upon herself to answer it.

"I think he is very anxious," she said in a half whisper.

"What brought him here just now? He did not know we were coming home."

Mrs. Woolper answered this question.

"He came for something for Miss Charlotte, sir; some books as she'd had from the library. They'd not been sent back; and he came to see about their being sent."

"What books?" murmured Charlotte. But a pressure from Mrs. Woolper's hand prevented her saying more.

"I never encountered any one with so little self-command," said Mr. Sheldon. "If he is going to rush in and out of my house in that manner, I must really put a stop to his visits altogether. I cannot suffer that kind of thing. For Charlotte's welfare quiet is indispensable; and if Mr. Hawkehurst's presence is to bring noise and excitement, Mr. Hawkehurst must not cross this threshold."

He spoke with suppressed anger; with such evident effort to restrain his anger, that it would have seemed as if his indignation against Valentine was no common wrath.

Charlotte caught his last words.

"Dear papa," she pleaded in her faint voice, "pray do not be angry with
Valentine; he is so anxious about me."

"I am not angry with him; but while you are ill, I will have quiet—at any price."

"Then I'm sure you should not have brought Charlotte home," exclaimed Georgy, in tones of wailing and lamentation; "for of all the miseries in life, there is nothing worse than coming home in the very midst of a general cleaning. It was agreed between Ann Woolper and me that there should be a general cleaning while we were away at the seaside. We were to be away a fortnight, and everything was to be as neat as a new pin when we came home. But here we are back in less than a week, and everything at sixes-and-sevens. Where we are to dine I know not; and as for the carpets, they are all away at the beating-place, and Ann tells me they won't be home till Friday."

"We can exist without carpets," answered Mr. Sheldon, in a hard dry voice. "I suppose they are seeing to Miss Halliday's room?" he added, addressing himself to Mrs. Woolper. "Why don't you go and look after them, Nancy?"

"Sarah knows what she has to do. The bed-rooms was done first; and there's not much amiss in Miss Charlotte's room."

Mr. Sheldon dropped wearily into a chair. He looked pale and haggard. Throughout the journey he had been unfailing in his attention to the invalid; but the journey had been fatiguing; for Charlotte Halliday was very ill—so ill as to be unable to avoid inflicting trouble upon others. The weariness—the dizziness—the dull intervals of semi-consciousness—the helpless tottering walk, which was like the walk of intoxication rather than ordinary weakness—the clouded sight—all the worst symptoms of this nameless disease, had every hour grown more alarming.

Against this journey to London Mrs. Sheldon and Diana had pleaded—Georgy with as much earnestness as she could command; Diana as forcibly as she dared argue a question in which her voice had so little weight.

But upon this point Mr. Sheldon was adamant.

"She will be better off in London," he said resolutely. "This trip to the seaside was a whim of my wife's; and, like most other whims of my wife's, it has entailed trouble and expense upon me. Of course I know that Georgy did it for the best," he added, in reply to a reproachful "O Philip!" from Mrs. Sheldon. "But the whole business has been a mistake. No sooner are we comfortably settled down here, than Hawkehurst takes it into his head to be outrageously alarmed about Charlotte, and wants to bring half-a-dozen doctors round the poor girl's bed, to her inevitable peril; for in an illness which begins and ends in mental depression, all appearance of alarm is calculated to do mischief."

Having said this, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in making arrangements for the journey. A carriage was ordered; all possible preparations were made for the comfort of the invalid—everything that care or kindness could do was done; but the cruelty of the removal was not the less obvious. Georgy wailed piteously about the sixes-and-sevens to which they were being taken. Diana cared nothing about sixes-and-sevens; but she felt supreme indignation against Charlotte's stepfather, and she did not attempt to conceal her feelings.

Nor was it without an effort to oppose Mr. Sheldon's authority that Miss
Paget succumbed to the force of circumstances. She appealed to his wife.

"Dear Mrs. Sheldon, I beg you not to suffer Lotta's removal," she said earnestly. "You do not know how ill she is—nor can Mr. Sheldon know, or he would not take such a step. As her mother, your authority is superior to his; you have but to say that she shall not be taken from this house in her present state of prostration and sickness."

"I have only to say!" cried Georgy, piteously. "O Diana, how can you say such a thing? What would be Mr. Sheldon's feelings if I were to stand up against him, and declare that Charlotte should not be moved? And he so anxious too, and so clever. I'm sure his conduct about my poor dear Lotta is positively beautiful. I never saw such anxiety. Why, he has grown ten years older in his looks since the beginning of her illness. People go on about stepfather this, and stepfather that, until a poor young widow is almost frightened to marry again. But I don't believe a real father ever was more thoughtful or more careful about a real daughter than Philip has been about Lotta. And what a poor return it would be if I were to oppose him now, when he says that the removal will be for Charlotte's good, and that she will be near clever doctors—if she should require clever doctors! You don't know how experienced he is, and how thoughtful. I shall never forget his kindness to poor Tom."

"Yes," exclaimed Miss Paget impatiently, "but Mr. Halliday died."

"O Diana," whimpered Georgy, "I did not think you could be so unkind as to remind me of that."

"I only want to remind you that Mr. Sheldon is not infallible."

Mr. Sheldon entered the room at this juncture, and Diana left it, passionately indignant against the poor weak creature, to whom no crisis, no danger, could give strength of mind or will.

"A sheep would make some struggle for her lamb," she thought, angrily.
"Mrs. Sheldon is lower than a sheep."

It was the first time she had thought unkindly of this weak soul, and her anger soon melted to pity for the powerless nature which Mr. Sheldon held in such supreme control. She made no further attempt at resistance after this; but went to Charlotte's room and prepared for the journey.

"O, why am I to be moved, dear?" the girl asked piteously. "I am too ill to be moved."

"It is for your good, darling. Mr. Sheldon wants you to be near the great physicians, who can give you health and strength."

"There are no physicians who can do that. Let me stay here, Di. Beg papa to let me stay here."

Diana hid her face upon the invalid's shoulder. Her tears choked her. To repress her grief was agony scarcely endurable. But she did hide all trace of anger and sorrow, and cheered the helpless traveller throughout the weariness of the journey.

* * * * *

Charlotte was lying on a sofa in her bedroom, with Mrs. Woolper in attendance upon her, when Dr. Jedd arrived. It was a quarter to six, and the low western sunshine flooded the room.

The physician came with Valentine, and did not ask to see Mr. Sheldon before going to his patient's room. He told the housemaid who admitted him to show the way to Miss Halliday's room.

"The nurse is there, I suppose?" he said to the girl.

"Yes, sir; leastways, Mrs. Woolper."

"That will do."

Mr. Sheldon heard the voice in the hall, and came out of the library as the doctor mounted the step of the stairs.

"Who is this? What is this?" he asked of Valentine Hawkehurst.

"I told you I was not satisfied with Dr. Doddleson's opinion," answered the young man coolly. "This gentleman is here by appointment with me."

"And pray by what right do you bring a doctor of your own choosing to visit my stepdaughter without previous consultation with me?"

"By the right of my love for her. I am not satisfied as to the medical treatment your stepdaughter has received in this house, Mr. Sheldon, and I want to be satisfied. Miss Halliday is something more than your stepdaughter, remember: she is my promised wife. Dr. Jedd's opinion will be more assuring to me than the opinion of Dr. Doddleson."

At the sound of Dr. Jedd's name Mr. Sheldon started slightly. It was a name he knew only too well—a name he had seen among the medical witnesses in the great Fryar trial, the record of which had for him possessed a hideous fascination. He had fancied himself in the poisoner Fryar's place; and the fancy had sent an icy chill through his veins. But in the next minute he had said to himself, "I am not such a reckless fool as that man Fryar was; and have run no such risks as he ran."

At the name of Jedd the same icy shiver ran through his veins again. His tone of suppressed anger changed to a tone of civility which was almost sycophantic.

"I have the honour to know Dr. Jedd by repute very well indeed, and I withdraw my objection to your course of proceeding, my dear Hawkehurst; though I am sure Dr. Jedd will agree with me that such a course is completely against all professional etiquette, and that Dr. Doddleson will have the right to consider himself aggrieved."

"There are cases in which one hardly considers professional etiquette. I shall be very happy to meet Dr. Doddleson to-morrow morning. But as Mr. Hawkehurst was very anxious that I should see Miss Halliday to-night, I consented to waive all ceremony, and come with him on the spot."

"I cannot blame his anxiety to secure so valuable an opinion. I only wonder what lucky star guided him to so excellent an adviser."

Mr. Sheldon looked from Dr. Jedd to Valentine Hawkehurst as he said this. The physician's face told him no more than he might have learnt from a blank sheet of paper. Valentine's face was dark and gloomy; but that gloomy darkness might mean no more than natural grief.

"I will take you to my stepdaughter's room at once," he said to the physician.

"I think it will be better for me to see the young lady alone," the doctor answered coolly: "that is to say, in the presence of her nurse only."

"As you please," Mr. Sheldon replied.

He went back to his study. Georgy was sitting there, whimpering in a feeble way at intervals; and near her sat Diana, silent and gloomy. A settled gloom, as of the grave itself, brooded over the house. Mr. Sheldon flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He had sneered at the inconvenience involved in uncarpeted floors, but he was beginning to feel the aggravation of that inconvenience. These two women in his study were insupportable to him. It seemed as if there was no room in the house in which he could be alone; and just now he had bitter need of solitary meditation.

"Let them arrange the dining-room somehow, carpet or no carpet," he said to his wife. "We must have some room to dine in; and I can't have you here, Georgy; I have letters to write."

Mrs. Sheldon and Diana were not slow to take the hint.

"I'm sure I don't want to be here, or anywhere," exclaimed Georgy in piteous accents; "I feel so miserable about Charlotte, that if I could lie down and die, it would be a comfort to me. And it really seems a mockery having dinner at such a time. It's just as it was during poor Tom's illness; there were fowls and all sorts of things cooked, and no one ever ate them."

"For God's sake go away!" cried Mr. Sheldon passionately; "your perpetual clack is torture to me."

Georgy hurried from the room, followed closely by Diana.

"Did you ever see any one more anxious?" Mrs. Sheldon asked, with something like pride.

"I would rather see Mr. Sheldon less anxious!" Diana answered gravely.

CHAPTER II.

DR. JEDD'S OPINION.

Alone, Philip Sheldon breathed more freely. He paced the room, waiting for the appearance of the doctor; and with almost every turn he looked at the clock upon the chimneypiece.

How intolerable seemed the slow progress of the moments! How long that man Jedd was staying in the sick-room! And yet not long; it was he, Philip Sheldon, who was losing count of time. Where was Valentine? He opened the door of the room, and looked out. Yes, there was a figure on the stairs. The lover was waiting the physician's verdict.

A door on the landing above opened, and the step of the Doctor sounded on the upper flight. Mr. Sheldon waited for Dr. Jedd's appearance.

"I shall be glad to hear your opinion," he said quietly; and the Doctor followed him into the study. Valentine followed the Doctor, to Mr. Sheldon's evident surprise.

"Mr. Hawkehurst is very anxious to hear what I have to say," said Dr.
Jedd; "and I really see no objection to his hearing it."

"If you have no objection, I can have none," Mr. Sheldon answered. "I must confess, your course of proceeding appears to me altogether exceptional, and—"

"Yes, Mr. Sheldon; but then, you see, the case is altogether an exceptional case," said the physician, gravely.

"You think so?"

"Decidedly. The young lady is in extreme danger. Yes, Mr. Sheldon, in extreme danger. The mistake involved in her removal to-day is a mistake which I cannot denounce too strongly. If you had wanted to kill your stepdaughter, you could scarcely have pursued a more likely course for the attainment of your object. No doubt you were actuated by the most amiable motives. I can only regret that you should have acted without competent advice."

"I believed myself to be acting for the best," replied Philip Sheldon, in a strange mechanical way.

He was trying to estimate the true meaning of the Doctor's address. Was he merely expressing anger against an error of ignorance or stupidity, or was there a more fatal significance in his words?

"You overwhelm me," the stockbroker said presently; "you positively overwhelm me by your view of my daughter's condition. Dr. Doddleson apprehended no danger. He saw our dear girl on Sunday morning—yesterday morning," added Mr. Sheldon, wonder-stricken to find that the interval was so brief between the time in which he had walked with Valentine and Dr. Doddleson in the garden at Harold's Hill and the present moment. To Valentine it seemed still more wonderful. What a bridgeless gulf between yesterday morning and to-night! All his knowledge of this man Sheldon, all the horror involved in Tom Halliday's death, had come upon him in that brief span.

"I should like to see Dr. Doddleson's prescriptions," said Dr. Jedd, with grave politeness.

Mr. Sheldon produced them from his pocket-book with an unshaken hand. No change of countenance, no tremulous hand, no broken voice, betrayed his apprehension. The one distinguishing mark of his manner was an absent, half-mechanical tone, as of a man whose mind is employed otherwise than in the conversation of the moment. Prompt at calculation always, he was at this crisis engaged in a kind of mental arithmetic. "The chances of defeat, so much; the chances of detection—?"

A rapid survey of his position told him what those chances were. Detection by Dr. Jedd? Yes. That had come to him already perhaps. But would any actual harm to him come of such detection?

He calculated the chances for and against this—and the result was in his favour. That Dr. Jedd should form certain opinions of Miss Halliday's case was one thing; that he should give public utterance to those opinions was another thing.

"What can his opinion matter to me?" Mr. Sheldon asked himself; "opinion cannot touch me in a case where there is no such thing as certainty. He has seen the dilatation of the pupil—even that old fool Doddleson saw it—and has taken fright. But no jury in England would hang a man on such evidence as that; or if a jury could be found to put the rope round a man's neck, the British public and the British press would be pretty sure to get the rope taken off again."

"Chloric Æther, spirits of ammonia—hum, ha, hum—yes," muttered Dr. Jedd, looking at one prescription. "Quinine, yes; aqua pura," he murmured, looking at another.

He threw them aside with a half-contemptuous gesture, and then took up a pen and began to write.

"My mode of treatment will be quite different from that adopted by Dr. Doddleson," he said; "but I apprehend no difficulty in bringing that gentleman round to my view of the case when we meet."

As he wrote his prescription Philip Sheldon rose and looked over his shoulder.

The form of the prescription told him that Dr. Jedd knew—all! He had suspected this from the first, and the confirmation of this suspicion did not shake him. He grew firmer, indeed; for now he knew on what ground he was standing, and what forces were arrayed against him.

"I really do not understand the basis of your treatment," he said, still looking over the physician's shoulder.

Dr. Jedd turned his chair with a sudden movement, and faced him.

"Am I talking to Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker, or Mr. Sheldon the surgeon-dentist?" he asked.

This was a blow. This allusion to the past was a sharper stroke than any that Philip Sheldon had before received. He looked at Valentine; from Valentine to the physician. What did it mean, this mention of the past? That blabbing fool George had talked to his friend of the days in Fitzgeorge Street, no doubt; and Valentine had blabbed Mr. Sheldon's antecedents to the physician.

Was this what it all meant? Or did it mean more than this? Whatever it might mean, he faced the hidden danger, and met the uncertainties of his position as calmly as he met its certainties.

"I have no desire to interfere with your treatment," he said, very quietly; "but I have some knowledge of the Pharmacopoeia, and I confess myself quite at a loss to understand your prescription."

"Dr. Doddleson will understand it when he has heard my opinion. There is no time to be lost—Mr. Hawkehurst, will you take this to the chemist, and wait for the medicine? Miss Halliday cannot take it too soon. I shall be here to-morrow at nine o'clock.—If you wish me to see Dr. Doddleson, Mr. Sheldon, you will perhaps arrange an appointment with him for that hour."

"It is rather an early hour."

"No hour is too early in a case attended with so much danger. Perhaps it will be as well for me to call on Dr. Doddleson as I drive home. I shall make a point of seeing Miss Halliday twice a day. I find your housekeeper a very sensible person. She will remain in close attendance upon the sick-room; and I must beg that there is no quackery—no home-made remedies. I have given your housekeeper all directions as to treatment and diet, and she has my orders to allow no one but herself in the invalid's room. There is a marked tendency to delirium, and quiet is indispensable."

"I have said as much myself," answered Mr. Sheldon.

"Mr. Hawkehurst will undertake to see to the making-up of my prescriptions," continued Dr. Jedd, as he drew on his gloves. "He is very anxious about the young lady, and it will afford him some relief of mind to be employed in her service. No, thanks," he said, putting aside Mr. Sheldon's hand as that gentleman offered him his fee. "I have already received my honorarium from Mr. Hawkehurst."

There was no more to be said. The physician wished the two men good evening, and returned to his carriage, to be driven home to dinner by way of Plantagenet Square, where he saw Dr. Doddleson, and appointed to meet him next day, much to the delight of that individual, who was proud to be engaged in a case with the great Jedd.

Valentine left the house on the heels of the Doctor. He came back in about twenty minutes with the medicine. He did not go to the principal gate, but to a little side gate, near the offices of the gothic villa—a gate to which butchers and bakers came with their wares in the morning.

"I want to see Miss Paget," he said to the maid who answered his summons; "and I want to see her without disturbing Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon. Do you know where to find her?"

"Yes, sir; she's in her own room. I took her a cup of tea there ten minutes ago. She's got a headache with fretting about our poor young lady, and she won't go down to dinner with master and missus."

"Will you ask her to step out here and speak to me for a few minutes?"

"Won't you come indoors and see her, sir?"

"No; I'd rather see her in the garden."

It was still daylight here, but it was growing shadowy among the avenues in Kensington Gardens. The gate near which Valentine waited was not to be seen from the windows of dining or drawing-room.

The housemaid ran off to summon Miss Paget; and in less than five minutes
Diana appeared, dressed in her hat and garden jacket.

"Will you come out into the road with me, dear?" asked Valentine. "I have something serious to say to you."

"And I am so anxious to hear what the Doctor has said," answered Diana, as she took Valentine's arm.

The road before the Lawn was very quiet at this hour of the evening, and here they were safely beyond Mr. Sheldon's ken.

"Tell me the Doctor's opinion, Valentine," Diana said, eagerly. "Does he think the case very serious?"

"He does. It is more serious than you or I could have imagined, if
Providence had not helped me to discover the truth."

"What do you mean, Valentine?"

He gave her in brief the story of his day's work. She listened to him breathlessly, but uttered no exclamation until his story was finished.

"It is most horrible," she said at last; "but I believe it is most true. There has been so much in that man's conduct that has mystified me; and this explains all. But what earthly motive can have prompted this hideous crime?"

"He believes that he has a beneficial interest in her death. I cannot fully understand his motive; but, rely upon it, there is a motive, and a sufficient one. And I have let that man delude me into belief in his honesty after I had been warned against him! But there is no time for regrets. Diana, I look to you to help me in saving my dear love."

"It is not too late to save her?"

"Dr. Jedd will commit himself to no positive statement. He tells me she is in danger, but he does not refuse all hope. Now listen, my dear. In that house I have only two people to help me—Ann Woolper and yourself. Ann Woolper I hold only by a feeble bond. I think she will be true to us; but I am not sure of her. Sheldon's influence over her is a powerful one; and God knows what concession he might extort from her. She is the ostensible guardian of Charlotte's room; you must contrive to be the real guardian. You must keep custody over the custodian. How is your room situated in relation to Charlotte's room?"

"The doors of the two rooms are exactly opposite."

"Providence favours us there. Can you keep watch over Charlotte's door from your room without making your guardianship too apparent?"

"I can."

"Day and night?"

"Day and night."

"God bless you, dear! Her life may be saved by your fidelity."

"I would do as much to render her a smaller service."

"My dear girl! And now go back to the house. Here is the medicine. You will give that into Mrs. Woolper's hands; she has received her instructions from Dr. Jedd, and those instructions leave no room for doubt. If she permits Sheldon to tamper with the medicine or the food of her patient, she will be the wilful accomplice of a murderer. I think she may be trusted."

"I will watch her."

"The charge of procuring the medicine is mine. I shall come to this house many times in the course of every day; but I am bound to prepare myself for the hour in which Mr. Sheldon may forbid me his house. In that event I shall come to this gate. I suppose the servants would stand by me if you pleaded for me?"

"I am sure they would."

"And now, dear, go; the medicine is wanted. I shall come back in a few hours to inquire if there is any change for the better. Go."

They had returned to the gate ere this. He grasped the hand which she held out to him, and stood by the little gate watching her till she had disappeared through the door of the servants' quarters. When the door closed, he walked slowly away. He had done all that it was possible for him to do, and now came his worst misery. There was nothing left for him but to wait the issue of events.

What was he to do? Go home to his lodgings—eat, drink, sleep? Was it possible for him to eat or to sleep while that precious life trembled in the balance? He walked slowly along the endless roads and terraces in a purposeless way. Careless people pushed against him, or he pushed against them; children brushed past him as they ran. What a noisy, busy, clattering world it seemed! And she lay dying! O, the droning, dreary organs, and the hackneyed, common tunes, how excruciating they were to him to-night!

He emerged into the high road by-and-by, in all the bustle and riot of Notting Hill. The crowded shops, the clamorous people, seemed strange to him. It was like the clamour of a foreign city. He walked on past the bustle and riot, by the quieter terraces near Holland Park, and still held on to Shepherd's Bush, where he went into a little public-house and called for some brandy.

There was a bench on one side of the space in front of the bar, and towards this he pushed his way.

"Where are you shoving to, my young swell?" growled a sturdy cabman, indignant at the outrage inflicted by Valentine's elbows; but in the next moment the sturdy cabman dashed suddenly forward and caught the young swell in his strong arms.

"My eye, young un!" he cried; "where do you want to go to? Here, some one bring a mug of cold water: I'm blest if he ain't in a fit!"

Happily it was no fit, only a dead faint into which Mr. Hawkehurst had fallen. He came back to consciousness presently, after a few spoonfuls of brandy had been forced into his mouth, and looked about him with a helpless stare.

"I'm jiggered if I don't believe he's fainted for the want of wittles!" cried the cabman. "They keeps up till they drop, sometimes, these seedy swells—walks about, lookin' like so many Dossays, on a hempty stomach. Here, some one bring a plate o' cold meat, and look sharp about it. I'll stand sam."

Valentine looked up with a faint smile.

"And I'll stand sam for anything you like to order, my friend," he said, holding out his hand to the good-natured cabman. "I've eaten nothing since last night; but I haven't fasted for want of money. There are worse troubles than an empty pocket,—and I'm not unacquainted with that."

"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, sheepishly, very much ashamed of his benevolence; "but, you see, it ain't the fust time I've seen a swell come to the pavement with a cropper, in consequence of having gone it too fast, and cleaned hisself out, in a manner of speaking."

CHAPTER III.

NON DORMIT JUDAS.

The summer darkness closed round the Bayswater villa, but of sleep there was little for any one in that household during this sad night. Is there not, in almost every household, a memory of such days and nights—dread intervals in which the common course of life and time seems to be suspended, and all the interests of the universe hang upon the fitful breath of one dear sufferer?

Lonely were the watchers in Mr. Sheldon's house. Georgy was in her own room, forbidden to disturb the invalid by her restless presence—now lying down, now pacing to and fro, now praying a little, now crying a little—the very ideal of helpless misery.

In the sick-room there was no one but the invalid and Ann Woolper. In the room opposite watched Diana Paget, her door ajar, her senses sharpened by anxiety, quick to hear the faintest sound of footfall on the stairs, or to feel the slightest vibration from stealthily opened door on the story below.

Alone in the study sat Philip Sheldon, at the table where he was accustomed to write—a blank sheet of paper before him, a pen held loosely in his outstretched hand, and his eyes fixed in an unseeing gaze upon the bookcase opposite—the living image of care. Now that the turmoil of the day was done, and there was silence in the house, he had set himself to face his position. It was no trifling task which he had to perform. Not one difficulty, or one set of difficulties, had he to meet and master. The armed enemies up-springing from the dragon's teeth which he had sown were not to be set fighting amongst themselves, nor were they to be smashed by any rocks that he could hurl amongst them. They stood around him in an awful circle, and turn which way he would, he saw the same appalling figure, armed to the teeth, and invincible as death.

What had he to fear?

Detection of a past crime? No, that was a fool's terror which shook him at the sound of Tom Halliday's name—a child's fear of the nursery bogie. Detection in the present was more to be dreaded. The work that he had done was, according to his belief, work that could not be proved against him. But there are crimes of which to be accused is to be condemned. Lawyers may plead, and juries may acquit; but the fiat of public opinion goes forth against the suspected wretch, and on his forehead for ever shows the dark brand of Cain.

For the criminal of almost every shade of colour, save this one dread hue, society has a sanctuary and earth a refuge. The forger may find a circle in which the signing of another man's name, under the pressure of circumstances, is held to be a misfortune rather than an offence. The swindler has the gentlemanly brotherhood and sisterhood of Macaire for his family, and need never be lonely. The thief may dance away his jovial nights among kindred spirits, and be carried to his grave by sorrowing fellow-artists. The coiner may be jolly in his hiding-place among his chosen band of brother coiners. But for the murderer there is no such thing as human sympathy; and, when the blood of Nancy dyes his cruel hand, Bill Sykes may thank God if he has a dog that will follow him to his wretched end, for from mankind he can hope nothing.

Mr. Sheldon did not contemplate his position from any sentimental point of view; but he told himself that to be suspected of having poisoned his friend, and to be accused of poisoning, or attempting to poison, his daughter, would be ruin—ruin social and commercial, ruin complete and irretrievable.

And having faced one of these dread armed antagonists, he passed on to another shadowy enemy.

What if Charlotte recovered, and he escaped the taint of uttered suspicion—for Dr. Jedd's private opinion he cared very little—what then?

Then the grim antagonist lifted his visor, and showed him the countenance of Commercial Disgrace.

Unless within the next few weeks he could command from eight to ten thousand pounds, his disgrace as a member of the Stock Exchange was inevitable. Charlotte's death would give him the means of raising as much upon the policies of assurance obtained by her, and which, by the terms of her will, he would inherit. The life-insurance people might be somewhat slow to settle his claims; but he had all possible facilities for the raising of money upon any tangible security, and he could count upon immediate cash, in the event of Charlotte's death.

But what if she should not die? What if this nameless languor, this mysterious atrophy, taken vigorously in hand by Dr. Jedd, should be vanquished, and the girl should live?

What indeed? A sharp spasm contracted the stockbroker's hard cold face as he pictured to himself the result of failure.

He saw the crowd of busy faces in the House, and heard the low hum of many voices, and the dull sound of the big half-glass doors swinging to and fro, and the constant tread of hurrying feet. He heard the buzz of voices and the tramp of feet stop as suddenly as if that busy tide of human life had been arrested by an enchanter's wand. The enchanter is no other than the head-waiter of the Stock Exchange, who takes his position by a stand in the midst of that great meeting-place, and removes his hat.

After that sudden silence comes a faint sound of anxious whisperings; and then again a second silence, still more profound, prevails in that assembly. Three times, with wooden hammer sounding dull against the woodwork of his stand, the waiter raps his awful rap. To some it is the call of doom. The commercial Nemesis hides her awful countenance. Slow and solemn sound those three deliberate strokes of the wooden hammer. You can hear the stertorous breathing of an apoplectic stockbroker, the short panting respiration of some eager speculator—the rest is silence. And then the voice of the waiter—proxy for the commercial Nemesis—calmly enunciates the dread decree.

"Philip Sheldon begs to inform the members of the House that he cannot comply with his bargains."

A sudden flutter of the leaves of many note-books follows that awful announcement. Voices rise loud in united utterance of surprise or indignation. The doors swing to and fro, as hurrying members dash in and out to scan the market and ascertain how far they may be affected by this unlooked-for failure.

This was the scene which the watcher pictured to himself; and for him Fate could wear no aspect more terrible. Respectability, solvency, success—these were the idols to which he had given worship and tribute in all the days of his life. To propitiate these inexorable ones he had sacrificed all the dearest and best blessings which earth and heaven offer to mankind. Rest or happiness, as other men consider these blessings, he had never known; the sense of triumph in success of the present, the feverish expectation of success in the future—these had stood to him in the place of love and hope, pleasure and idlesse, all the joys and comforts of this lower world, and all the holy dreams of purer pleasures in a world to come.

One vague brief thought of all that he had sacrificed flashed across his brain; and swift upon his track followed the thought of what he stood to lose.

Something more than his position upon the Stock Exchange was at stake. He had done desperate things in the vain hope of sustaining that position against the destroying sweep of Fortune's turning tide. Bills were afloat which he must meet, or stand before the world a detected forger,—bills drawn upon companies that were shadowy as the regions of their supposed operations. Bills amounting to five thousand pounds, drawn, upon the Honduras Mahogany Company, Limited; other bills amounting to upwards of three thousand pounds, against the Pennsylvanian Anthracite Coal Corporation, Limited. The sum he might raise on the policies of insurance would about cover these bills; and, simultaneously with their withdrawal, fresh bills might be floated, and the horse-leech cry of the brokers for contango might be satisfied until there came a reaction in the City, and the turning tide should float him into some harbour of safety. Beyond this harbour shone a splendid beacon, the dead girl's inheritance—his, to claim by right of the same will that would give him the sum insured upon her life.

Without this immediate ready money there was no extraction from the hideous labyrinth. His position had been already too long sustained by bills of exchange. There were people in the City who wanted, in vulgar parlance, to see the colour of his money. He knew this—and knew how frail the tenure by which he held his position, and how dire the crash which would hurl him down to ruin.

After the proclamation of his inability to meet his differences—the Deluge: and, looking gloomily athwart the flood and tempest, he saw neither ark nor Ararat.

Charlotte's death was the one chance of redemption; and to that event he looked as to a figure in a mathematical proposition. Of this girl herself, with all her wealth of beauty and goodness, of hope and love, he had scarcely any definite idea. She had so long been no more to him than an important figure in the mathematics of his life, that he had lost the power to behold her in any other light.

The hardness of his nature was something lower than absolute cruelty of heart. It was less human than the half-insane ferocity of a Nero. It was a calm indifference to the waste of human life, which, displayed upon a larger field of operation, would have made a monster cold and passionless as Sphinx or ChimÆra.

"I must see Ann Woolper," he said to himself, presently, "she will not dare to exclude me from that room."

He listened to the striking of the Bayswater clocks. Two o'clock. Within and without the house reigned a profound silence. The room immediately over Mr. Sheldon's study was Charlotte's room, and here there had been for a long time no sound of life or movement.

"Asleep, I dare say," muttered Mr. Sheldon, "invalid and nurse both."

He exchanged his boots for slippers, which he kept in a little cupboard below the bookshelves, among old newspapers, and went softly from the room. The gas was burning dimly on the stairs and on the landing above. He opened the door of the invalid's room softly, and went in.

Mrs. Woolper was seated beside the bed. She looked up at him with unwinking eyes.

"I thought you was abed, sir," she said.

"No; I am too anxious to sleep."

"I think every one is anxious, sir," Mrs. Woolper answered, gravely.

"How is your patient?"

The pretty white curtains of the little brass Arabian bedstead were drawn.

"She is asleep, sir. She sleeps a great deal. The doctor said that was only natural."

"She has taken her medicine, I suppose?" said Mr. Sheldon.

He glanced round the room as he asked this question, but could see no trace of medicine-bottle or glass.

"Yes, sir; she has taken it twice, the poor dear."

"Let me look at the medicine."

"The strange doctor said as I was to let no one touch it, sir."

"Very likely; but that direction doesn't apply to me."

"He said no one, sir."

"You are an old fool!" muttered Mr. Sheldon, savagely.

"Ah no, sir," the housekeeper answered, with a profound sigh; "I am wiser than I was when poor Mr. Halliday died."

This answer, and the sigh, and the look of solemn sadness which accompanied it, told him that this woman knew all. She had suspected him long ago; but against her unsupported suspicion the mere force of his character had prevailed. She was wiser now; for on this occasion suspicion was confirmed by the voice of science.

He stood for a few minutes looking at his old nurse, with a dark moody face. What could he feel except supreme indignation against this woman, who dared to oppose him when he had the best right to rely on her faithful service? She had promised him her fidelity, and at the first hint from a stranger she coolly deserted him and went over to the enemy.

"Do you mean to say that you refuse to let me look at the medicine which you have been giving to my stepdaughter?" he asked.

"I mean to say that I will obey the orders given me by the strange doctor," the old woman answered, with a calm sadness of tone, "even if it turns you against me—you that have given me a comfortable home when there was nothing before me but the workhouse; you that I carried in my arms forty years ago. If it was anything less than her dear life that was in danger, sir, and if I hadn't stood by her father's deathbed, I couldn't stand against you like this. But knowing what I do, I will stand firm as a rock between you and her; and think myself all the more truly your faithful servant because I do not fear to offend you."

"That's so much arrant humbug, Mrs. Woolper. I suppose you've made your book with Miss Halliday and Miss Halliday's lover, and think you can serve your turn best by sticking to them and throwing me over the bridge. It's only the way of the world. You're genuine Yorkshire, and know how to pack your cards for winning the trick. But suppose I were to spoil your game by turning you out of doors neck and crop? What then?"

"I don't think you'll do that, sir."

"Why not, pray?"

"I don't think you dare do it, in the face of that strange doctor."

"You don't? And so Dr. Jedd is the master of this house, is he?"

"Yes, sir. Till that poor dear young lady is well again, if ever that day comes, I think Dr. Jedd will be the real master in this house."

"By ——! Mrs. Woolper, you're a cool hand, I must say!"

He could say no more. Of passionate or declamatory language he had no command. The symbols of thought that obtained in his world were of a limited and primitive range.

"You're a cool hand," he repeated, under his breath. And then he turned and left the room, opening and closing the door less cautiously than on his entrance.

The door of the opposite room was opened softly as he came out into the corridor, and Diana Paget stood before him, dressed as she had been in the day.

"What!" he exclaimed, impatiently, "are you up too?"

"Yes, Mr. Sheldon. I cannot sleep while Lotta is so ill."

"Humph! I suppose you mean to get yourself on the sick-list, and give us another invalid to nurse."

"I will not trouble you to nurse me if I should be ill."

"Ah!" growled the stockbroker, as he went to his own room, "you are a pack of silly women altogether; and your fine friend Hawkehurst is more womanish than the silliest of you. Goodnight."

He went into his own room, where he found his wife still awake. Her weak lamentings and bewailings were insupportable to him; and at three o'clock he went downstairs, put on his boots and a light overcoat, and went out into the dim regions of Bayswater, whence he saw the sun rise red above the eastern roofs and chimneys, and where he walked until the first clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels began to echo through the empty streets, and, with faint distant cries of sweeps and milk-women, life's chorus recommenced.

It was seven o'clock when he went back to his house, and let himself in softly with his latchkey. He knew that he had been walking a long time, and that he had seen the sun rise; but what streets or squares he had been walking in he did not know. He crept upstairs to his dressing-room with stealthy footsteps, and made an elaborate toilet. At eight o'clock he was seated at breakfast in the hastily-arranged dining-room, with the newspapers by the side of his cup and saucer. At nine he went into the hall to receive Dr. Jedd and Dr. Doddleson, who arrived almost simultaneously. His carefully-arranged hair and whiskers, his well made unpretentious clothes, his spotless linen, would have done credit to an archbishop. Of all the cares and calculations of his long dreary night there was no trace, except a certain dulness in his eyes, and the dark half-circles below them.

CHAPTER IV.

COUNTING THE COST.

For four days and four nights there were fear and watching in Mr. Sheldon's house; and in all that time the master never quitted it, except stealthily, in the dead of the night, or at early daybreak, to roam in a purposeless manner he knew not where. The doctors came and went—Dr. Doddleson once a day, Dr. Jedd two or three times a day—and every one in villas adjoining and villas opposite, and even in villas round the corner, knew that the stockbroker's stepdaughter lay sick unto death; for the white horses of Dr. Jedd's landau were as the pale horse of the Pale Rider himself, and where they came was danger or death. Ah, thank God! to some they have brought hope and blessing; not always the dread answer, "You have called me in vain."

Valentine Hawkehurst came many times in the day, but between him and Mr. Sheldon there could be no safe meeting; and the lover came quietly to the little gate, where a kindly housemaid gave him a little note from Diana Paget. Miss Paget wrote half a dozen little notes of this kind in the course of every day, but she never left her post in the room opposite the sick-chamber. She complained of headache, or of some vague illness which prevented her taking her meals in the dining-room, and Mr. Sheldon was fain to be satisfied with this explanation of her conduct.

She was on guard; and the wretched master of the house knew that she was on guard, and that if Ann Woolper could be bought over, or frightened into compliance with his wishes, this girl would still remain, faithful as watchdog, by the door of her friend and companion. He asked himself whether by violent or diplomatic process, he could rid himself of this second watcher; and the answer was in the negative. The circle around him was a circle not to be broken.

His wife, as yet, had been told nothing of the suspicions that reigned in the breasts of other people. He knew this; for in his wife's face there was no token of that dark knowledge, and she, of all people, would be least skilled to deceive his scrutinizing eyes. Nor had the younger servants of his household any share in the hideous suspicion. He had watched the countenance of the maid who waited on him, and had convinced himself of this.

It was something to know that even these were not yet leagued against him; but he could not tell at what moment they too might be sworn into that secret society which was growing up against him in his own house. Power to carry out his own schemes in the face of these people he felt that he had none. Upon the dark road which he had travelled until of late without let or hindrance, there had arisen, all at once, an insurmountable barrier, with the fatal inscription, Here there is no Thoroughfare.

Beyond this barrier he could not pass. Sudden as the dread arrest of Lot's wife was the mandate which had checked his progress. He was brought to a dead stop; and there was nothing for him to do but to wait the issue of Fate. He stood, defiant, unabashed, face to face with the figure of Nemesis, and calmly awaited the lifting of the veil.

He hoped that Charlotte Halliday would die. If by her death he could tide over his difficulties and drift into smooth water, it would be but a very small thing to him that Dr. Jedd, and Dr. Doddleson enlightened by his colleague, and Valentine Hawkehurst, and Diana Paget, and a stupid pig-headed old Yorkshirewoman, should carry in their minds for the remainder of their lives the suspicion that by his means that fair young life had been brought to its early close.

What would it amount to in the future of his own existence? Prudential considerations would induce these people to lock the secret of this suspicion in their own breasts. Dr. Jedd would bow to him somewhat coldly, perhaps, if they met in the streets of London, or possibly might refuse to make any return to his passing salutation; but the cut direct from Dr. Jedd would not cast a shadow over his commercial career, or even weaken his social position. If, by the loud folly of Hawkehurst, some evil rumour about him should float as far eastward as the Stock Exchange, who would be found to give credence to the dark report? Men would shrug their shoulders and shake their heads incredulously; and one of these wise men of the east would remark that, "A fellow in Sheldon's position doesn't do that kind of thing, you know;" while another would say, "I dined with him at Greenwich last summer, and a remarkably good dinner he gave us. Dawkins, the great shipbuilder, and M'Pherson, of M'Pherson and Flinders, the Glasgow merchants, were there. Very jolly affair, I assure you. Deuced gentlemanly fellow, Phil Sheldon." And so the matter would end.

Would there be an inquest in the event of his stepdaughter's death? Well, no. Jedd knew that in such a case all post-mortem inquiry must end in confusion and perplexity, statement and counter-statement from medical witnesses, who would contradict one another persistently in the support of their pet theories, and who would regard the investigation as a very convenient opportunity for ventilating their own opinions and airing their own importance. A considerable number of the canine race would be slaughtered, perhaps, in the process of dilettante experiments; the broad principles of chemical science would be discussed from every point of view, in innumerable letters published in the Zeus, and the Diurnal Hermes; and the fact that an amiable and innocent young woman had been foully murdered would be swept out of the minds of mankind before a whirlwind of technical debate. Jedd was the last man to stake his reputation upon such a hazard. No: Mr. Sheldon knew that he had played a cautious game; and if he should ultimately lose the stake for which he had ventured, it would be because he had been just a little too cautious.

"These things are generally done too quickly," he said to himself. "My mistake has been to make matters too slow."

Come what might, of after-consequences to himself from Charlotte
Halliday's illness or death he had no apprehension.

Thus it was that he met Dr. Jedd day after day with a face as calm as the stony countenance of that distinguished physician himself. Such anxiety as an affectionate stepfather should feel during the peril of his stepdaughter Mr. Sheldon took care to express. Greater anxiety than this by no look or gesture did he betray. He knew that he was watched; and that the people about him were inimical to himself and to his interests; and he was never off his guard.

It had been necessary for him to come to London in order to be within easy reach of that troubled sea, the money-market. But perilous though the voyage of his bark across that tempestuous ocean was, he could not guide the helm in person. He was obliged to confide matters to the care of Mr. Frederick Orcott, whom he harassed with telegraphic despatches at all hours of the day, and who at this period seemed to spend his life between the stockbroker's office and Bayswater.

It seemed as if Mr. Sheldon meant to hold his ground in that house until the issue of events was determined. Valentine Hawkehurst and George Sheldon met at the solicitor's offices, and there was a long and serious consultation between them.

"One thing seems pretty clear," said George, conclusively, "and that is, that my brother Phil isn't to be got off the premises except by some very deep move. The question is, what move can be deep enough to trap such a man as he? He's a man who knows the inside of your mind better than you do yourself; and can reckon you up as easily as the simplest sum in arithmetic."

The two men talked together very seriously for some time after this, and on the same day Valentine lay in wait for Dr. Jedd as he left Philip Sheldon's house, and was driven back to town in that gentleman's carriage. On the road there was much serious talk between Miss Halliday's physician and Miss Halliday's lover. Valentine was still very grave and very anxious when he took his leave of Dr. Jedd; but he was more hopeful than he had been for the last few days.

On the same evening Gustave Lenoble received a brief epistle from his plighted wife.

"MY DEAR GUSTAVE,—I regret to find from your letter that the doctors consider my father weaker than when I was last at Knightsbridge; but, even knowing this, I cannot come to him just yet. The duty which detains me here is even more sacred than his claim upon my care. And I know your goodness to him, and feel that in you he has a better friend and comforter than I could be to him. I thank you, dear, for your kindness to this poor broken-down wanderer even more than for your generous devotion to me. And now I am going to ask you a favour. It is, that you will afford Mr. Hawkehurst, the person who will give you this letter, the help of your friendship and counsel in very difficult and critical circumstances, which he will explain to you. I have spoken to you of him very little, though his devotion to my dear adopted sister, Charlotte Halliday, brings him very near to me. Her long, and of late dangerous, illness has been a bitter time of trial to him, even more than to me; but the trial has proved him true as steel. I think your counsel may be of some service to him just now, and I am sure your friendship will help to support him in a period of acute anxiety.

"Do not ask to see me, dear Gustave. I cannot leave this house while Charlotte is in danger; but if it please God to remove that danger, I shall then be free to go where I please, and my future life shall be at your disposal. Do not think me cold or ungrateful; I am only faithful to the first friend I ever knew.—Yours always, with all affection,

"DIANA PAGET."

CHAPTER V.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

Three days elapsed after the delivery of this letter. Upwards of a week had gone by since the return of Mr. Sheldon and his family from Harold's Hill: and as yet Philip Sheldon knew not what the issue of events was to be. Very vague were the oracular sentences which his questioning extorted from Dr. Jedd, and he had tried in vain to obtain a tÊte-À-tÊte interview with Dr. Doddleson. The physician of Burlington Row took care that his feeble colleague should not fall alone and defenceless into the pathway of Philip Sheldon. Of Charlotte's actual condition her stepfather, therefore, knew very little. He was told that her state was attended by danger; and the solemn faces which greeted him on every side implied that the danger was extreme. From her room he was in a manner excluded. If he went to her door to make some benevolent and paternal inquiry, he was met on the threshold by Ann Woolper, the sleepless and unresting. If he hinted a natural desire to see his invalid stepdaughter, he was told that she had that moment fallen asleep, or that she was too ill to see him. There was always some plausible reason why he should not be admitted to her room; and finding that this was so, he did not press the question.

He had taken Mrs. Woolper's measure, and had found that she was too strong for him; doubly strong since she was supported and sustained by that second sleepless watcher, Diana Paget, whom Mr. Sheldon had long ago pronounced to be a strong-minded and superior young person.

From his wife he could obtain no real information—nothing but weepings and lamentations; weak apprehensions of future woe, weaker retrospective reflections on the fatal illness and untimely end of her first husband. Georgy was admitted once or twice a day to the sick-room; but she emerged therefrom no wiser than she entered it. Sorrow in the present, and the fear of greater sorrow to come, had utterly prostrated this poor weak soul. She believed what other people told her to believe, she hoped what they told her to hope. She was the very incarnation and express image of helpless misery.

So, in utter darkness of mind, Mr. Sheldon awaited his destiny. The day drew very near on which he must find certain sums of ready money, or must accept the dreary alternative of ruin and disgrace. He had the policies of assurance in his cash-box, together with the will which made him Charlotte's sole legatee; he had fixed in his own mind upon the man to whom he could apply for an advance of four thousand pounds on one of the two policies, and he relied on getting his banker to lend him money on the security of the second. But for the one needful event he had yet to wait. That event was Charlotte Halliday's death.

Of his dreary wanderings in the early morning the household knew nothing. The time which he chose for these purposeless rambles was just the time when no one was astir. The watchers in the two rooms above heard neither his going out nor his coming in, so stealthy were his movements on every occasion. But without this intermission from the dreadful concentration of his life, without this amount of physical exercise and fresh air, Philip Sheldon could scarcely have lived through this period. The solitude of shipwrecked mariner cast upon a desolate island could hardly be more lonely than this man's life had been since his return from Harold's Hill. From his study to the dining-room, and from the dining-room back to his study, was the only variety of his dreary days and nights. He had an iron bedstead put up in his study, and there he lay in the earlier hours of the night, taking such rest as he could from fitful dozing that was scarcely sleep, or from brief intervals of heavy slumber made horrible by torturing dreams.

In this room he could hear every sudden movement in the hall, every footstep on the stairs, every opening and shutting of the outer door. Here, too, he could keep his watch, holding himself ready to counter the movements of his enemies, should any opportunity arise for action on his part, defensive or aggressive.

To this room he stealthily returned one brilliant summer morning as the clocks were striking six. He had been walking in the Bayswater Road, amidst all the pleasant stir and bustle of early morning. Waggons coming in from the country, milkwomen setting forth on their daily rounds, clamorous young rooks cawing among the topmost branches of the elms, song-birds chirruping and gurgling their glad morning hymn; and over all things the glory and the freshness of the summer sunshine.

But to Philip Sheldon it was as if these things were not. For the last twelve or fifteen years of his life he had taken no heed of the change of the seasons, except insomuch as the passage of time affected his bill-book, or the condition of that commercial world which was the beginning and end of his life. Now, less than ever, had he an ear for the carolling of birds, or an eye for the glory of summer sunlight, or the flickering shadows of summer leaves faintly stirred by the soft summer wind.

He re-entered his house with a half-dazed sense of the stir and life that had been about him in the high road. It was a relief to him to escape this life and brightness, and to take shelter in the gloom of his study, where the shutters were closed, and only a faint glimmer of day crept through a chink in the shrunken woodwork.

For the first time since the beginning of this dreary period of idleness and suspense he felt himself thoroughly beaten, and instead of going up to his dressing-room for his careful morning toilet, as it was his habit to do at this hour, he flung himself, dressed as he was, upon the low iron bedstead, and fell into a heavy slumber.

Yes, there they were—the familiar tortures of his slumbers, the shadows of busy, eager faces; and upon all one universal expression of mingled anger and surprise. The sound of a wooden hammer striking three solemn strokes; the faint tones of Tom Halliday's voice, thanking him for his friendly care; the dying look in Tom Halliday's face, turned to him with such depth of trust and affection. And then across the shadowy realm of dreams there swept the slow solemn progress of a funeral cortege—plumed hearses, blacker than blackest night; innumerable horses, with funereal trappings and plumed headgear waving in an icy wind; long trains of shrouded figures stretching on into infinite space, in spectral procession that knew neither beginning nor end. And in all the solemn crowd passing perpetually with the same unceasing motion, there was no sound of human footfall, no tramp of horse's hoof, only that dismal waving of black plumage in an icy wind, and the deep boom of a bell tolling for the dead.

He awoke with a start, and exclaimed, "If this is what it is to sleep, I will never sleep again!"

In the next minute he recovered himself. He had been lying on his back. The endless pageant, the dreadful tolling of the funeral bell, meant no more than nightmare, the common torment of all humanity.

"What a fool I must be!" he muttered to himself, as he wiped his forehead, which had grown cold and damp in the agony of his dream.

He opened the shutters, and then looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. To his surprise he found that he had been sleeping three hours. It was nine o'clock. He went upstairs to dress. There was an unusual stir in the corridor above. Ann Woolper was standing there, with her hand on the door of the sick-room, talking to Diana, who covered her face suddenly as he approached, and disappeared into her own room.

The beating of his heart quickened suddenly. Something had happened to disturb the common course of events. Something? What was likely to happen, except the one dread circumstance for which he hoped and waited with such horrible eagerness?

In Ann Woolper's solemn face he read an answer to his thought. For the first time he was well nigh losing his self-possession. It was with an effort that he steadied himself sufficiently to ask the usual conventional question in the usual conventional tone.

"Is she any better this morning, Ann?"

"Yes, sir, she is much better," the Yorkshirewoman answered solemnly.
"She is where none can harm her now."

Yes; it was the usual periphrase of these vulgar people. He knew all their cant by heart.

"You mean to say—she—is dead?"

He no longer tried to conceal his agitation. It was a part of his duty to be agitated by the news of his stepdaughter's untimely death.

"O, sir, you may well be sorry," said the Yorkshirewoman, with deep feeling. "She was the sweetest, most forgiving creature that ever came into this world; and to the last no hard or cruel word ever passed her innocent lips. Yes, sir, she is gone; she is beyond the power of any one to harm her."

"All that sort of stuff is so much hypocritical twaddle, Mrs. Woolper," muttered Mr. Sheldon impatiently; "and I recommend you to keep it for the chaplain of the workhouse in which you are likely to end your days. At what time—did—did this—sad event—happen?

"About an hour ago."

In the very hour when, in his hideous dream, he had beheld the solemn funeral train winding on for ever through the dim realms of sleep. Was there some meaning in such foolish shadows, after all?

"And why was I not sent for?"

"You were asleep, sir. I came downstairs myself, and looked into your room. You were fast asleep, and I wouldn't disturb you."

"That was very wrong; but it was of a piece with the rest of your
conduct, which has been from first to last antagonistic to me. I suppose
I can see my stepdaughter now," Mr. Sheldon added, with a grim smile.
"There is no further excuse—about headache—or sleep."

"No, sir, you cannot see her yet. In an hour, if you wish to come into this room, you can come."

"You are extremely obliging. I begin to doubt whether I am really in my own house. In an hour, then, I will come. Where is my wife?"

"In her own room, sir, lying down; asleep, I believe."

"I will not disturb her. How about the registration, by-the-by? That must be seen to."

"Dr. Jedd has promised to attend to that, sir."

"Has Dr. Jedd been here?"

"He was here an hour ago."

"Very good. And he will see to that," muttered Mr. Sheldon thoughtfully.

The event for which he had been so long waiting seemed at the last a little sudden. It had shaken his nerves more than he had supposed it possible that they could be shaken.

He went to his dressing-room, and on this occasion made a very hasty toilet. The event had been tardy, and he had no time to lose in discounting it now that it had come to pass. He went from his dressing-room back to his study, took the jacket containing the policies of assurance and the will from the deed-box, and left the house.

A cab conveyed Mr. Sheldon swiftly to a dingy street in the City—a street which might have been called the pavement of wasted footsteps, so many an impecunious wretch tramped to and fro upon those dreary flags in vain.

The person whom Mr. Sheldon came to see was a distinguished bill-discounter, who had served him well in more than one crisis, and on whose service he fancied he could now rely.

Mr. Kaye, the bill-discounter, was delighted to see his worthy friend Mr. Sheldon. He had just come up from his family at Brighton, and had quite a little court awaiting him in an outer chamber, through which Mr. Sheldon had been ushered to the inner office.

"It's rather early for such a visitor as you," Mr. Kaye said, after a few commonplaces. "I have not been in town half an hour."

"My business is too important for any consideration about hours," answered Mr. Sheldon, "or I should not be here at all. I have just come from the deathbed of my wife's daughter."

"Indeed!" exclaimed the bill-discounter, looking inexpressibly shocked. Until that moment he had lived in supreme ignorance of the fact that Mr. Sheldon had a stepdaughter; but his sorrow-stricken expression of countenance might have implied that he had known and esteemed the young lady.

"Yes, it's very sad," said Mr. Sheldon; "and something more than sad for me. The poor girl had great expectations, and would have come into a very fine fortune if she had lived a year or two longer."

"Ha! dear me, how very unfortunate! Poor young lady!"

"Jedd and Doddleson—you know them by repute, of course—have been attending her for the last six weeks. There will be no end of expense for me; and it has been all of no use."

"Consumption, I suppose?"

"Well, no; not pulmonary disease. A kind of atrophy. I scarcely know what to call it. Now, look here, Kaye. This illness has thrown all my affairs into a muddle. Taken in conjunction with the depressed state of the money-market, it has been altogether an upset for me. I have been staying at home looking after this poor girl and my wife—who of course is dreadfully cut up, and that sort of thing—when I ought to have been in the City. Luckily for me, and for my wife, in whose interests I acted, I took the precaution to get her daughter's life insured eight or nine months ago; in point of fact, immediately after finding she was heir-at-law to a considerable fortune. The policy is for five thousand pounds. I want you to give me four thousand immediately upon the strength of the document and of my stepdaughter's will."

"Give you four thousand!" exclaimed Mr. Kaye, with a little unctuous laugh. "Do you suppose I keep such a balance as that at my banker's?"

"I suppose that you can give me the money if you like."

"I might be able to get it for you."

"Yes; that's a kind of humbug a hundred years old. We've heard all about little Premium and his friend in the City, and so on, from that man who wrote plays and cut a figure in Parliament. You can give me the money on the spot if you like, Kaye; and if I didn't want ready money very badly I shouldn't come to you. The insurance company will give me five thousand in a month or two. I can give you my bill at two months' date, and deposit the policy in your hands as collateral security. I might get this money from other quarters—from my bankers', for instance; but I don't want to let them know too much."

Mr. Kaye deliberated. He had assisted Mr. Sheldon's financial operations, and had profited thereby. Money advanced upon such a security must be as safe as money invested in Consols, unless there were anything doubtful in the circumstances of the policy; and that, with a man of Mr. Sheldon's respectability, was to the last degree unlikely.

"When do you want this money?" he asked at last.

"At the beginning of next week. On the twenty-fifth at latest."

"And this is the twentieth. Sharp work."

"Not at all. You could give me the money this afternoon, if you pleased."

"Well, I'll think it over. It's a matter in which I feel myself bound to take my solicitor's opinion. Suppose you meet him here to-morrow at twelve o'clock? You can bring the necessary evidence to support the claim—the doctor's and registrar's certificate, and so on?"

"Yes," Mr. Sheldon answered, thoughtfully; "I will bring the documentary evidence. To-morrow at twelve, then."

Very little more was said. Mr. Sheldon left the will and the policy in the bill-discounter's possession, and departed. Things had gone as smoothly as he could fairly expect them to go. From Mr. Kaye's office he went to the Unitas Bank, where he had a very friendly, but not altogether satisfactory, interview with the secretary. He wanted the Unitas people to advance him money on the strength of the second policy of assurance; but his balance had been very low of late, and the secretary could not promise compliance with his desires. Those Unitas shares valued at five thousand pounds, which he had transferred to his beloved stepdaughter, had been retransferred by the young lady some months before, with a view to the more profitable investment of the money.

This money, as well as all else that Philip Sheldon could command, had gone to the same bottomless pit of unlucky speculation. From the bank the stockbroker went to his office, where he saw Frederick Orcott, to whom he announced his stepdaughter's death with all due appearance of sorrow. He sat for an hour in his office, arranging his affairs for the following day, then sent for another cab, and drove back to Bayswater. The noonday press and noise of the City seemed strange to him, almost as they might have seemed to a man newly returned from lonely wanderings in distant wildernesses.

The blinds were down at the Lawn. His own handsome bedchamber and adjoining dressing-room faced the road, and it was at the windows of these two rooms he looked. He fancied his weak foolish wife wailing and lamenting behind those lowered blinds.

"And I shall have to endure her lamentations," he thought, with a shudder. "I shall have no further excuse for avoiding her. But, on the other hand, I shall have the pleasure of giving Mrs. Woolper and Miss Paget notice to quit."

He derived a grim satisfaction from this thought. Yes; insolence from those two women he would endure no longer. The time had come in which he would assert his right to be master in his own house. The game had been played against him boldly by Jedd and these people, and had been lost by them. He was the winner. He could not dismiss doctors, nurse, friend, lover. Charlotte Halliday's death made him master of the situation.

He went into his house with the determination to assert his authority at once. Within all was very quiet. He looked into the dining-room—it was quite empty; into the study—also empty. He went slowly upstairs, composing his face into the appropriate expression. At the door of that chamber which to him should have seemed of all earthly chambers the most awful, he knocked softly.

There was no answer.

He knocked a little louder, but there was still no answer. A little louder again, and with the same result.

"Is there no one there?" he asked himself. "No one, except—?"

He opened the door, and went in, with unshaken nerves, to look upon that one quiet sleeper whom his summons could not awaken, whom his presence could not disturb.

There was no nurse or watcher by the bed. Everything was arranged with extreme neatness and precision; but it seemed to him that there were objects missing in the room, objects that had been familiar to him during the dead girl's illness, and which were associated with her presence,—the clock that had stood on the table by her bed, a stand of books, a low easy-chair, with embroidered cover worked by her mother and Diana Paget. The room looked blank and empty without these things, and Mr. Sheldon wondered what officious hand had removed them.

Yonder stood the pretty little bedstead, shrouded by closely drawn white curtains. Philip Sheldon walked slowly across the room, and drew aside one of the curtains. He had looked upon the death-sleep of Charlotte Halliday's father, why not upon hers?

She was not there! Those closely drawn curtains shrouded only the bed on which she had slept in the tranquil slumbers of her careless girlhood. That cold lifeless form, whose rigid outline Philip Sheldon had steeled himself to see, had no place here.

He put his hand to his head, bewildered. "What does it mean?" he asked himself; "surely she died in this room!"

He went hurriedly to his wife's room. They had taken Charlotte there, perhaps, shortly before her death. Some feverish fancy might have possessed her with the desire to be taken thither.

He opened the door and went in; but here again all was blank and empty. The room was arranged after its usual fashion; but of his wife's presence there was no token. His sense of mystification and bewilderment grew suddenly into a sense of fear. What did it mean? What hellish fooling had he been the dupe of?

He went to Diana's room. That, too, was empty. A trunk and a portmanteau, covered and strapped as if for removal, occupied the centre of the room.

There was no other room upon this floor. Above this floor there were only the rooms of the servants.

He went downstairs to the dining-room and rang the bell The parlour-maid came in answer to his summons.

"Where is your mistress?" he asked.

"Gone out, sir; she went at eight o'clock this morning. And O, if you please, sir, Dr. Jedd called, and said I was to give you this—with the certificate."

The certificate! Yes, the certificate of Charlotte Halliday's death,—the certificate which he must produce to-morrow, with other evidence, for the satisfaction of the bill-discounter and his legal adviser. He stared at the girl, still possessed by the sense of bewilderment which had come upon him on seeing those empty rooms upstairs. He took the letter from her almost mechanically, and tore it open without looking at the address. The certificate dropped to the ground. He picked it up with a tremulous hand, and for some moments stood staring at it with dazzled, unseeing eyes. He could see that it was a document with dates and names written in a clerkly hand. For some moments he could see no more. And then words and names shone out of the confusion of letters that spun and whirled, like motes in the sunshine, before his dazzled eyes.

"Valentine Hawkehurst, bachelor, author, Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road, son of Arthur Hawkehurst, journalist; Charlotte Halliday, spinster, of the Lawn, Bayswater, daughter of Thomas Halliday, farmer."

He read no more.

It was a copy of a certificate of marriage—not a certificate of death—that had been brought to him.

"You can go," he said to the servant hoarsely.

He had a vague consciousness that she was staring at him with curious looks, and that it was not good for him to be watched by any one just now.

"About dinner, sir, if you please?" the young woman began timidly.

"What do I know about dinner?"

"You will dine at home, sir?"

"Dine at home? Yes; Mrs. Woolper can give you your orders."

"Mrs. Woolper has gone out, sir. She has gone for good, I believe, sir; she took her boxes. And Miss Paget's luggage will be sent for, if you please, sir. There's a letter, sir, that Mrs. Woolper left for you on the mantelpiece."

"She was very good. That will do; you can go."

The girl departed, bewildered like her fellow-servants by the strangeness of the day's proceedings, still more bewildered by the strangeness of her master's manner.

CHAPTER VII.

"THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE."

When the servant was gone, Mr. Sheldon sat down and examined the document she had given him.

Yes, it was in due form. A certified copy of the certificate of a marriage performed that morning at the church of St. Matthias-in-the-fields, Paddington, and duly witnessed by the registrar of that parish. If this document were indeed genuine, as to all appearance it was, Valentine Hawkehurst and Charlotte Halliday had been married that morning; and the will and the policy of assurance deposited with Mr. Kaye the bill-discounter were so much waste-paper.

And they had fooled him, Philip Sheldon, as easily as this! The furious rage which he felt against all these people, and, more than against them, against his own besotted folly for allowing himself to be so fooled, was a sharper agony than had ever yet rent his cruel heart. He had been a scoundrel all his life, and had felt some of the pains and penalties of his position; but to be a defeated scoundrel was a new sensation to him; and a savage impotent hate and anger against himself and the universe took possession of his mind.

He walked up and down the room for some time, abandoned wholly to the ungovernable rage that consumed him, and with no thought beyond that blind useless fury. And then there came upon him the feeling that was almost a part of his mind—the consciousness that something must be done, and promptly. Whatever his position was, he must face it. His hurried pacing to and fro came to a sudden stop, and he took the crumpled document from his packet, and examined it once more.

There seemed little doubt that it was genuine; and a visit to the church where the marriage was stated to have been performed would immediately place the matter beyond all doubt. With the copy of the certificate, he had taken from his pocket the letter that had enclosed it. He saw now that the envelope was addressed in Hawkehurst's hand.

"Favoured by Dr. Jedd," he had written in a corner of the envelope.

Why should Dr. Jedd "favour" Mr. Hawkehurst's letter? Why, indeed, unless there had been a conspiracy concocted by these men against his authority and his interests?

Valentine's letter was brief and business-like.

"SIR,—With the full approbation of her mother and only near relation, my dear Charlotte has this day become my wife. The enclosed attested copy of the certificate of our marriage will afford you all particulars. I shall refrain from entering upon any explanation of my conduct; and I believe such explanation to be wholly unnecessary. You can scarcely fail to understand why I have acted in this manner, and why I congratulate myself and my dear wife on her departure from your house as on an escape from imminent peril. It will be, I fear, little satisfaction to you to hear that the doctors have pronounced your stepdaughter to be out of danger, though still in very weak health. She is now comfortably established in a temporary home, with her mother and Diana Paget; and in all probability some months must elapse before she and I can begin our new life together. To afford my darling girl the legal protection of marriage was the object of this sudden and secret union. You, of all men, will most fully comprehend how necessary such protection had become to ensure her safety.

"Should you, however, require farther enlightenment as to the motives that prompted this step, Dr. Jedd will be the fittest person to give you such information; and has expressed his willingness to answer any questions you may please to put to him.

"For the rest, I beg to assure you that the rights of Mrs. Hawkehurst in relation to the inheritance of the late John Haygarth's wealth will be as carefully protected as those of Miss Halliday; nor will the hasty marriage of this morning hinder the execution of any deed of settlement calculated to guard her interests in the future.

"With this assurance, I remain, sir,
Your obedient servant,
VALENTINE HAWKEHURST.
Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road."

Enclosed with this there was a second letter—from his wife.

He read it with a countenance that expressed mingled anger and contempt.

"Fool!" he muttered; "this is about the only service she could do me."

The letter was long and incoherent; blotted with tears—in places completely illegible. Mr. Sheldon cared only to master the main facts contained in it, which were these:—His wife had left him for ever. Dr. Jedd and Valentine Hawkehurst had told her of something—something that affected the safety of her darling and only child—and the knowledge of which must separate her for ever from him. Of the money which she had brought to him she claimed nothing. Even her jewels, which were in his keeping, in the iron safe where he kept his papers, she did not attempt to obtain from him. Valentine would not allow her to starve. The humblest shelter, the poorest food, would suffice her in the future; but no home of his providing could she ever inhabit again.

"What I have suffered in this last few days is only known to myself and to heaven," she wrote. "O Philip, how could you—how could you even shape the thought of such a deed as this, which you have been doing, day after day, for the last two months? I could not have believed what they have told me, if I had not seen my child fade hour by hour under your care, slowly, surely—and recover as surely directly you were excluded from any part in our care of her. If it were possible not to believe these people, I would disbelieve them, and would cling to you faithfully still; but the voices against you are too many, the proofs against you are too strong.

"Do not seek to see me. I am with my poor child, who was but just able to bear the removal from your house, and to go through the ceremony that was performed this morning. Little did I ever think my daughter would have such a wedding. What a mockery all my plans seem now!—and I had chosen the six bridesmaids, and arranged all the dresses in my own mind. To see my dear girl dressed anyhow, in her oldest bonnet, standing before the altar huddled up in a shawl, and given away by a strange doctor, who kept looking at his watch in a most disrespectful manner during the ceremony, was very bitter to me."

Mr. Sheldon flung aside the letter with an oath. He had no time to waste upon such twaddle as this. He tore open Nancy Woolper's letter. It was a poor honest scrawl, telling him how faithfully she had served him, how truly she had loved him in the past, and how she could henceforth serve him no more. It exhorted him, in humble ill-spelt phrases, to repentance. It might not yet be too late even for such a sinner as he had been.

He tore these two epistles into infinitesimal fragments, and flung them into the fireplace. Valentine Hawkehurst's letter he kept. It was a document of some legal importance.

For a moment there had flashed across his brain the thought that he might punish these people for their interference with his affairs. He might bring an action against Dr. Jedd for slander, and compel the physician to prove the charges insinuated against him, or pay the penalty attendant upon an unjustifiable accusation. He was well assured that Dr. Jedd could prove very little; and a jury, if properly worked, might award him exemplary damages.

But on the other hand, the circumstantial evidence against him was very strong; and evidence which might be insufficient to prove him guilty in a trial for his life might be a sufficient defence for his enemies against an action for slander; if, indeed, the course which Dr. Jedd and Valentine Hawkehurst had taken did in itself constitute a slanderous and malicious imputation. Nor could any such action invalidate the marriage solemnized that morning; and that one fact comprised his utter ruin. Charlotte's interests were merged in the interests of her husband. No shadow of claim upon John Haygarth's wealth remained to him.

His ruin was complete and dire. For a long time his circumstances had been desperate—no avenue of escape open to him but the one dark way which he had trodden; and now that last road was closed against him. The day was very near at hand when his fictitious bills on shadowy companies must be dishonoured; and with the dishonour of those bills came the end of all things for him,—a complete revelation of all those dishonest artifices by which he had kept his piratical bark afloat on the commercial waters.

He surveyed his position in every light, calmly and deliberately, and saw there was no hope. The whole scheme of his existence was reduced to the question of how much ready-money he could carry out of that house in his pocket, and in what direction he should betake himself after leaving it.

His first care must be to ascertain whether the marriage described in the duplicate certificate had really taken place; his next, to repossess himself of the papers left with Mr. Kaye.

Before leaving the house he went to his study, where he examined his banker's book. Yes, it was as they had told him at the bank. He was overdrawn. Among the letters lying unopened on his writing-table he found a letter from one of the officials of the Unitas, calling his attention, politely and respectfully, to that oversight upon his part. He read the letter, and crumpled it into his pocket with an angry gesture.

"I am just about as well off now as I was twelve years ago, before Tom Halliday came to Fitzgeorge Street," he said to himself; "and I have the advantage of being twelve years older."

Yes, this is what it all came to, after all. He had been travelling in a circle. The discovery was humiliating. Mr. Sheldon began to think that his line of life had not been a paying one.

He opened his iron safe, and forced the lock of the jewel-case in which his wife had kept the few handsome ornaments that he had given her in the early days of their marriage, as a reward for being good—that is to say, for allowing her second husband to dispose of her first husband's patrimony without let or hindrance. The jewels were only a few rings, a brooch, a pair of earrings, and a bracelet; but they were good of their kind, and in all worth something like two hundred pounds.

These, and the gold chronometer which he carried in his waistcoat-pocket, constituted all the worldly wealth which Mr. Sheldon could command, now that the volcanic ground upon which his commercial position had been built began to crumble beneath his feet, and the bubbling of the crater warned him of his peril. He put the trinkets into his pocket without compunction, and then went upstairs to his dressing-room, where he proceeded to pack his clothes in a capacious portmanteau, which in itself might constitute his credentials among strangers, so eminently respectable was its appearance.

In this dread crisis of his life he thought of everything that affected his own interests. To what was he going? That question was for the moment unanswerable. In every quarter of the globe there are happy hunting-grounds for the soldier of fortune. Some plan for the future would shape itself in his mind by-and-by. His wife's desertion had left him thoroughly independent. He had no tie to restrain his movements, nothing to dread except such proceedings as might be taken against him by the holders of those bills. And such proceedings are slow, while modern locomotion is swift.

What was he leaving? That was easily answered. A labyrinth of debt and difficulty. The fine house, the handsome furniture, were held in the same bondage of the law as his household goods in Fitzgeorge Street had been. He had given a bill of sale upon everything he possessed six months before, to obtain ready-money. The final terrible resource had not been resorted to until all other means had been exhausted. Let this fact at least be recorded to his credit. He was like the lady whom the poet sings, who,

"tolerably mild, To make a wash would hardly boil a child:"

that is to say, she would try all other materials for her cosmetic preparation first; and if they failed, would at last resort, unwillingly, to the boiling of children.

No; he had nothing to lose by flight—of that fact it was easy for him to assure himself.

He went downstairs, and rang for the servant.

"I am going out," he said, "to join my wife and her daughter, and return with them to the sea-side. There is a portmanteau upstairs in my room, ready packed. You will give it to the messenger I shall send in the course of the next day or two. At what time did Mrs. Sheldon and Miss Halliday leave this morning?"

"At eight o'clock, sir. Mr. Hawkehurst came to fetch them in a carriage. They went out by the kitchen passage and the side gate, sir, because you were asleep, Mrs. Woolper said, and was not to be disturbed."

"At eight. Yes. And Mrs. Woolper and Miss Paget?"

"They went a'most directly after you was gone out, sir. There was two cabs to take Miss Halliday's and Mrs. Sheldon's things, and such like,—just as there was when you came from Harold's Hill."

"Yes; I understand."

He was half inclined to ask the young woman if she had heard the direction given to the drivers of these two cabs. But he refrained from doing so. What could it profit him to know where his wife and stepdaughter were to be found? Whether they were in the next street or at the antipodes could matter very little to him, except so far as the knowledge of their place of habitation might guide him in his avoidance of them. Between him and them there was a gulf wider than all the waters of the world, and to consider them was only foolish waste of time and thought. He left the house, which for the last five years of his life had been the outward and visible sign of his social status, fully conscious that he left it for ever; and he left it without a sigh. For him the word home had no tender associations, and the domestic hearth had never inspired him with any sense of comfort or pleasure with which he might not have been inspired by the luxurious fireside of a first-class coffee-room. He was a man who would have chosen to spend his existence in joint-stock hotels, if there had not been solidity of position to be acquired from the possession of a handsome house.

He went to the Paddington church. It was only five o'clock in the afternoon by the clock of that edifice. The church was closely shut, but Mr. Sheldon found the clerk, who, in consideration of a handsome donation, took him to the vestry, and there showed him the register of marriages—the last entry therein.

Yes, there was Charlotte Halliday's signature, a little uncertain and tremulous.

"I suppose you are one of the young lady's relations, sir," said the clerk. "It was rather a strange affair; but the young lady's ma was with her; and the young lady was over age, so, you see, there's nothing to be said against it."

Mr. Sheldon had nothing to say against the marriage. If any false statement of his, however base or cruel, could have invalidated the ceremonial, he would have spared no pains to devise such a falsehood. If he had been a citizen of the Southern States, he might have suborned witnesses to prove that there was black blood in the veins of Valentine Hawkehurst. If he had not been opposed to so strong an opponent as Dr. Jedd, he might have tried to get a commission of lunacy to declare Charlotte Halliday a madwoman, and thus invalidate her marriage. As it was, he knew that he could do nothing. He had failed. All was said in those three words.

He wasted no time at the church, but hurried on to the City, where he was just in time to catch Mr. Kaye leaving his office.

"Have you sent those papers to your solicitor?" he asked.

"No; I was just going to take them round to him. I have been thinking that it will be necessary to ascertain that there is no will of Miss Halliday's subsequent to this; and that will be rather difficult to find out. Women never know when to leave off making wills, if they once begin making them. They have a positive rage for multiplying documents, you know. If the testator in that great codicil case had been a woman, a jury would scarcely have refused to believe in the story of half a dozen different codicils hidden away in half a dozen different holes and corners. Women like that sort of thing. Of course, I quite understand that you bring me the will in all good faith; but I foresee difficulties in raising money upon such a security."

"You need give yourself no further trouble about the matter," said Mr. Sheldon coolly. "I find that I can do without the money, and I've come to reclaim the papers."

Mr. Kaye handed them to his client. He was not altogether pleased by this turn of affairs; for he had expected to profit considerably by Mr. Sheldon's necessities. That gentleman honoured him with no further explanations, but put the papers in his pocket, and wished the bill-discounter good day.

And this was the last time that Philip Sheldon was ever seen in his character of a solid and respectable citizen of London. He went from the bill-discounter's office to a pawnbroker in the City, with whom he pledged Georgy's trinkets and his own watch for the sum of a hundred and twenty pounds. From the pawnbroker's he went back to Bayswater for his portmanteau, and thence to the Euston Hotel, where he dined temperately in the coffee-room. After dinner he went out into the dull back streets that lurk behind Euston Square, and found an obscure little barber's shop, where he had his whiskers shaved off, and his hyacinthine locks cropped as close as the barber's big scissors could crop them.

The sacrifice of these hirsute adornments made an extraordinary change in this man. All the worst characteristics of his countenance came out with a new force; and the face of Mr. Sheldon, undisguised by the whiskers that had hidden the corners of his mouth, or the waving locks that had given height and breadth to his forehead, was a face that no one would be likely to trust.

From the Euston Station he departed by the night mail for Liverpool, under the cover of darkness. In that city he quietly awaited the departure of the Cunard steamer for New York, and was so fortunate as to leave England one day before that fatal date on which the first of his fictitious bills arrived at maturity.

to the hall, and drew up at the clerk’s counter.

“I say, Sam,” cried Yates, “can’t you do something better for us than the fifth floor? I didn’t come to Buffalo to engage in ballooning. No sky parlors for me, if I can help it.”

“I’m sorry, Dick,” said the clerk; “but I expect the fifth floor will be gone when the Chicago express gets in.”

“Well, what can you do for us, anyhow?”

“I can let you have 518. That’s the next room to yours. Really, they’re the most comfortable rooms in the house this weather. Fine lookout over the lake. I wouldn’t mind having a sight of the lake myself, if I could leave the desk.”

“All right. But I didn’t come to look at the lake, nor yet at the railroad tracks this side, nor at Buffalo Creek either, beautiful and romantic as it is, nor to listen to the clanging of the ten thousand locomotives that pass within hearing distance for the delight of your guests. The fact is that, always excepting Chicago, Buffalo is more like—for the professor’s sake I’ll say Hades, than any other place in America.”

“Oh, Buffalo’s all right,” said the clerk, with that feeling of local loyalty which all Americans possess. “Say, are you here on this Fenian snap?”

“What Fenian snap?” asked the newspaper man.

“Oh! don’t you know about it? I thought, the moment I saw you, that you were here for this affair. Well, don’t say I told you, but I can put you on to one of the big guns if you want the particulars. They say they’re going to take Canada. I told ‘em that I wouldn’t take Canada as a gift, let alone fight for it. I’ve been there.”

Yates’ newspaper instinct thrilled him as he thought of the possible sensation. Then the light slowly died out of his eyes when he looked at the professor, who had flushed somewhat and compressed his lips as he listened to the slighting remarks on his country.

“Well, Sam,” said the newspaper man at last, “it isn’t more than once in a lifetime that you’ll find me give the go-by to a piece of news, but the fact is I’m on my vacation just now. About the first I’ve had for fifteen years; so, you see, I must take care of it. No, let the Argus get scooped, if it wants to. They’ll value my services all the more when I get back. No. 518, I think you said?”

The clerk handed over the key, and the professor gave the boy the check for his valise at Yates’ suggestion.

“Now, get a move on you,” said Yates to the elevator boy. “We’re going right through with you.”

And so the two friends were shot up together to the fifth floor.

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