Before leaving for Mexico there was a long, detailed conversation between Stolliker and Carlita, a conversation in which he fully outlined to her the part it would be necessary for her to play—a line of action to which she offered no word of objection, though her whole soul rebelled against such duplicity.

There was also a telegraph code agreed upon, by which cipher telegrams could be sent; a method used before, but always comparatively safe. A book was mutually agreed upon, in this instance "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," by Conan Doyle. The word, counting from the bottom of the page, was to be indicated by the first number, the page itself by the second; so that to read it would be impossible, unless the reader knew to what volume the numbers referred, as well as the edition selected.

They understood each other perfectly when Stolliker left to catch his train, and in his own mind there was not a doubt but that he should be able to prove Pierrepont's guilt with almost greater ease than he had ever settled a case before.

"It's too pretty a neck to be bound by a halter," he mused, as he took his seat in the train. "Adam lost Eden because of a woman—a woman who loved him; but this man will lose more than that, if I mistake not. He will lose not alone his life, but his soul as well, and for a woman who loves him not! It is a queer world, and man is the queerest animal in it. Instead of conscience making cowards of us all, passion makes brutes of us all, and we forget conscience and cowardice, too, under the intoxicant of a woman's smile."

After Stolliker had gone, the excitement which had seemed to brace Carlita for the emergency suddenly wore itself out, and for several days she was confined to her room, with a nearer approach to fever than she had ever had in her strong, healthy young life before.

It was during those few days that a strange change came over Jessica.

She developed a sudden affection for her mother's ward that touched that poor, friendless young thing to the heart. She even refused to go to the opera the night that Carlita was threatened with delirium, and sat beside the bed, holding Carlita's hand while the physician was in the room, and bending over the patient once or twice with tenderest solicitude when there was a murmur of a name upon those rambling lips which she did not wish the doctor to hear.

And Jessica learned much in those few days, much that it would have been a thousand times better if she had never known; but Carlita was unaware of that.

She lifted the girl's hand to her cooling lips, and pressed it there passionately when she realized who it was that had nursed her so carefully.

"How shall I thank you?" she murmured, faintly. "I don't think I have ever appreciated before how good you are!"

"Perhaps we have never quite understood each other before," returned Jessica, in that low, melodious voice which none knew better than she how to assume.

"Ah, yes, it is that," answered Carlita, eagerly. "But now that I know how tender your friendship can be, you will not withdraw it from me? I am so alone, so pitifully alone in all the world! There is not one creature that belongs to me, not one that cares whether I live or die, not one to whom I could stretch out my hand for help, no matter what my needs may be. It seems to me sometimes that my heart will break from the heaviness of its loneliness and isolation. Let me love you, Jessica! Let me love you!"

There was a peculiar smile upon the Judas lips, a smile filled with fascination—a fascination which she was exerting upon that helpless girl as she had upon so many men, luring them to eternal ruin, and then she bent and pressed a Judas kiss upon Carlita's tremulous lips.

"You silly little sentimentalist!" she exclaimed, laughingly. "I should always have been your friend if you had not repelled my advances with such determination. There now"—moving the pillows into a more comfortable position—"we won't talk about it any more. You are weak and nervous. The first thing I know you will cry, then I shall cry, and then I shall never forgive you as long as I live for making my nose red. Did you ever read in a novel about how beautiful the heroine looks when she cries? That is the baldest kind of rot! I never saw a girl in my life who looked pretty when she cried. I am not presentable for hours afterward."

It was a charity in its way, this new friendship, for in spite of its odious treachery on one side, it kept Carlita from going mad in those first days, and later gave her courage to play the part which Stolliker had mapped out for her.

At the end of the fifth day Stolliker reached the City of Mexico. He telegraphed from there, but there was nothing beyond the statement of his arrival.

On the seventh Carlita was up and about again, very wan, very haggard, but still on the road to recovery.

She felt that there was no longer any time to be lost in carrying out Stolliker's injunctions; and so, when Leith Pierrepont's card was brought to her two days later, she arose and went wearily downstairs.

"How you have suffered!" Leith exclaimed, as his eyes fell upon her.

Her own burned fiercely, and her lips trembled so that she could find no words in which to answer him.

He pressed her hand in silence, and led her to the same chair she had occupied that day when Stolliker was in the conservatory.

"It is so good of you to receive me," he continued, after a painful pause. "In memory of our compact of friendship, I have called every day to ask after you.'"

Her heart gave a great passionate bound, a mad bound of anger, at his presumption, she told herself; but her tone was calm, even serene, as she replied to him:

"Really? I was not told. Perhaps it was forgotten. It was very good of you to take so much trouble. Every one has been singularly kind and just, when I was fancying myself so cruelly alone, too."

"Never alone so long as you will consider me your friend."

"That is two I have now."

"Two? Who is the other?"

"Jessica."

"Oh!"

A shadow of disappointment crossed his brow, a disappointment which he made no attempt to conceal.

She laughed nervously.

"Jessica tells me that I have been such a fool," she said, in a tone that was quite new to her.

"Indeed? How?"

"She calls me 'little Puritan,' and says that my absurd morality has a Plymouth Rock cast. She has told me the reason I have but two friends."

"Has she? What is it?"

"It is because I am too intense for this day and generation. People don't like it. Frivolity and lightness of heart are much more to their taste."

"But what of your nature? Does that count for nothing? Is that not to be taken into consideration?"

"One's nature is a matter of education, nothing more. If that has been faulty, it should be rectified as quickly as possible."

"May I ask how she proposes that you shall rectify these defects of education?"

"Why, simply by imitating other people at first."

"Herself, for example?"

"Certainly."

"By playing poker after the opera, you mean?"

"Perhaps, though not necessarily. You do not approve?"

"I approve of a woman or man following the bent of her or his own particular predilection," he answered, evasively. "If you approve of playing poker, I have nothing to say."

"But—"

"But—I should be very sorry," he said, sadly.

"You would—withdraw from that compact of friendship?"

"No; I should feel that you needed me all the more, and I should be in constant attendance, lest the moment should arrive in my absence when you might want my services most."

She looked up at him with a faint smile, into which she would have thrown more archness had the power to do so been given her, and exclaimed, playfully:

"You offer inducement rather than opposition."

He flushed and drew back slightly, something in word, or tone, or glance jarring upon his emotion. Somehow he preferred her coldest disdain to the remark that she had made, and yet there was nothing in it to give offense to any man.

He walked to the other side of the fire, behind her chair, and changed the subject suddenly.

"When shall you be able to take up your music again?" he asked, irrelevantly.

"Soon, I hope," she answered, but with a little shiver.

He saw it, and his conscience smote him. He believed that he had wronged her.

"Carlita!" he cried, unconscious that in his pain he had used her first name. "Carlita, don't allow a morose and morbid desire to conceal your real emotions make you false to yourself and all those higher and better attributes with which God has blessed you. You have sustained a terrible shock. Don't let it turn the very beauties of your sweet nature into a curse. You want something to turn to in your hour of trouble. Let it be your music. God gave you a talent which He intended as a comfort and sustaining power. Call upon it now. May I play to you?"

She did not reply, she could not; but already he had wandered toward the piano. He sat down absent-mindedly and passed his hands over the keys.

It reminded them both of that other evening when he had played for her, and they sang together, that evening when he had told her of a love of which he had no right to speak, which had no right to exist. A great, wild, turbulent passion rose up in his heart against himself, numbing his fingers.

For the first time within his remembrance the keys beneath his hands gave forth a discordant sound.

He stood up suddenly and looked at her.

She too had arisen.

Her eyes were fierce, burning with raging passion. He thought he knew what thoughts were at work in her brain, and cried out feverishly:

"God! How can a man live to curse himself for a momentary yielding to madness! Do you believe there is any forgiveness for it? Do you believe there is forgiveness for any sin, when the person against whom you have sinned is dead, when he can no longer hear you cry out your passionate remorse?"

She did not reply. She rose ghastly in her horrible pallor, and stood there shaking and trembling as if an awful ague had fallen upon her. She was striving to loosen her cleaving tongue when Jessica came into the room suddenly, with a swish of skirts and a bound that startled her.

"Halloo, Leith!" she exclaimed, in the old slangy way. "Glad to see you back again. The house has been like a funeral. Look at Carlita! Like a ghost, isn't she? And you tiring her out by allowing her to stand in this way. If you had been either a good physician or a good nurse, you would have drawn up that couch and have her comfortably bolstered up with pillows. Now, I'm going to send her upstairs, just because you have been so thoughtless."

"I'm afraid I deserve the punishment," he answered, meekly. "But if I promise not to do it in future you won't banish me, will you?"

"Not to any alarming extent," she returned, laughing. "Here you are, Ahbel! Take our patient upstairs, see that she is nicely tucked up and has a good rest. And now, sir, give an account of yourself. Where have you been this last week?"

But Carlita did not hear his reply.

Ahbel had led her from the room to her own, where she suddenly sat down beside the window.

"Leave me, Ahbel!" she cried, nervously. "I'll ring if I want you, but I couldn't lie down now. I must think! I must think!"

She didn't even know when the girl left the room, but, with her hands clinched in her lap, sat looking half frantically out of the window.

What was it, she was asking herself, that he would have told her when Jessica entered? Could it have been a confession of his guilt? Would a guilty man have so spoken? What was it he meant? Was he innocent or guilty?

And, as if in answer to her unspoken question, a knock came upon the door, quick, incisive, as if the seeker for permission to enter realized the importance of her errand.

It was Ahbel.

"A telegram, miss!" she exclaimed, half breathlessly.

Carlita received it and tore it open hastily. It looked ordinary enough as it trembled in her hand, and yet there was something sinister in the array of figures as she flashed her eyes over them:

"2, 75, 107, 29, 12, 35, 18, 134; 24, 23, 18, 11, 126, 29, 23, 22, 55, 10, 324, 51, 23, 50, 135, 114, 45, 116, 19, 97, 17, 78, 4, 97."

Scarcely able to control her excitement, she sped across the floor to her escritoire, and snatched up the volume of "Sherlock Holmes" concealed there.

With trembling fingers she turned the pages and slowly counted out the words, horrible, ghastly in their import:

"The gentleman to whom you were engaged was not shot as you were told.

E. S."