My readers are wondering, perhaps, as to the fate of our beautiful and unfortunate heroine.

Let us go back a little in our story and take up the thread of her adventures.

It was the night previous to the day on which the two Leverets came to their death at the hands of Mrs. Vance. Up to that night Lily Lawrence had remained under the guardianship of the wicked old pair.

It was nearly nine o'clock when Lily sat before the fire in her room, her small hands resting on the arms of the chair, her eyes fixed sadly on the glowing coals in the grate. Old Haidee had brought her supper in and departed. She was alone for the night.

The young girl was simply habited in a neat, dark woolen dress. Cuffs and collar she had none, for Haidee, in providing her a winter dress, had had no thought or care for those delicate feminine accessories of the toilet. The thick, dark fabric fastened about her white throat and wrists rendered her extreme pallor and delicacy doubly striking. The earthly tabernacle seemed growing white and transparent enough for the bruised and wounded young soul to glimmer through.

She was thinking of Lancelot Darling—her betrothed husband—and now and then hot tears welled from her eyes and rolled down upon her pale cheeks. She wondered if he still remained faithful to her memory, or if, indeed, the wily widow had won him from her, as Doctor Pratt and Harold Colville had so confidently asserted.

"It is false," she said to herself, through her fast falling tears. "Lance loved me too truly to forget me so soon. What if I did see him bending over that wicked woman, turning the leaves of her music as he was wont to do for me? She had beguiled him to her side by the fascinating arts which a true woman would disdain. It was to win him that she tried to murder me. But though I never see my lover again I will not believe he could love her after having loved me, even though she might try to poison my memory with her false tale of suicide. No, no; I will believe in the loyalty of my lover until my latest breath."

She was sitting near the side of the fireplace, and on the other side of the wall old Peter and Haidee, who had retired to their room for the night, were sitting over their fire and talking earnestly together. She could hear the sound of their voices quite distinctly, for on her side of the room there was a large cracked place in the wall from which the plaster had fallen out, leaving a thin aperture through which voices were distinctly audible. Lily had never felt any desire before to hear the conversation of the old couple, but at this moment a sudden curiosity seized upon her as she heard the sound of her own name distinctly repeated.

Rising noiselessly from her chair she knelt upon the floor, and, placing her ear against the broken place in the wall, listened intently.

Their words and even the tone of their voices were plainly audible to her trained and acute hearing.

Words were being spoken by that wicked old pair that seemed to chill the blood in her veins to an icy current as she knelt there listening to the awful doom she had no power to avert.

"Yes," said the woman's voice, sharply, "I hate the girl so that I could strangle her with my own hands! Ever since the day she knocked me down and escaped from me, I have hated her with the hate of hell!"

"Aye, aye," said old Peter; "then why delay the deed we have long been determined upon. I am in favor of getting it done and over with."

"If I were not afraid of the vengeance of Pratt and Colville," said she, hesitating. "It's a terrible risk to run."

"Ten thousand dollars is worth running a considerable risk for," answered the old miser. "Now, here is the way we are placed, Haidee: Harold Colville will give us a few paltry hundreds for keeping the girl here, but her father will pay ten thousand dollars to the person who delivers her dead body, and no questions asked. How can you hesitate which to choose?"

"My God!" thought the wretched girl, with a wildly beating heart, "they are planning to murder me."

"I would not hesitate a moment—you know that, Peter—only that I see the difficulties in the way more plainly than you do," said the cautious Haidee.

"Difficulties—now that is the way with women, the silly geese," snorted Peter in angry contempt. "They always make mountains of mole-hills! What difficulties can you see, I wonder."

"How could we account to Pratt and Colville for her disappearance?" answered she.

"Easily enough; I have told you that twenty times before, old dunder-head! Say that she has escaped from us again."

"They would not believe it when they know that we both guard the door—they would not believe such a tale in the face of our united strength," returned she, rather shortly.

"Say that I was ill—say that I was drunk—or that I fell down in a fit before the door, and while you were assisting me she rushed past and escaped. Say anything you please to account for it—only tell them that she has given us the slip. They cannot help but believe it, knowing that she has made two desperate attempts before."

"That is true," she admitted; "still, when they find the body has been returned to the banker, and the ransom paid, what will they think then?"

"They will think that some designing person has palmed off a spurious body on them at first, and before they learn better we can be off and away to another city, Haidee. It all seems so plain and easy to me I wonder why you hang back so."

"My God! this is horrible," breathed poor Lily to herself, but a dreadful fascination held her immovable to her post.

"And then, the body itself," pursued Haidee. "It would have the look of one lately dead. How could we account to her friends for that? Remember, she is supposed to be dead these five months."

"Haidee, you are an old fool! You are getting into your dotage—what silly questions you ask, to be sure," panted the old man, in a furious rage with his hesitating wife.

"Oh, yes, I hear all that. But you have not answered my question yet," returned she, pertinaciously.

"I have answered it twenty times before—every time that we talked the matter over. We can say that we had it embalmed so that her friends might make sure of her identity when we claimed the ransom."

The old witch sat silently pondering a few minutes.

"Perhaps that would do," she said, rousing herself at last. "It may be that I am over cautious; I confess that I wish the girl dead."

"You consent then?" said Peter eagerly.

"Yes, I consent," she answered, with a ring of fierce joy in her unwomanly tones.

"Now that's my sensible wife," said Peter, transported with joy. "I thought you would come to your senses after a while. Well, since you are willing I say the sooner the better."

"Yes, the sooner the better," his wife repeated after him.

"Let it be to-night then," suggested Peter, who did not want to give Haidee's cautious fears any time to change her resolution. He believed in the old adage: "Strike while the iron is hot."

"Yes," answered Haidee readily, "let it be to-night."

The listener's heart gave a great fluttering bound and then sank like lead in her bosom.

Through all that she had suffered the desire of life, and the hope of ultimate release had remained strong in her breast. How could it be otherwise with one so young and lovely, and for whom life held so much? Now all her hopes were blighted in the dreadful knowledge just come upon her. Death in the horrible form of murder was about to blot out her young and tender life forever from the earth. She clasped her hands together, and repressing a strong desire to shriek aloud, lest that cry of anguish should precipitate her fate, listened on.

"Who will do the deed?" asked Peter, who was a coward in spite of his braggadocio.

"I will!" said Haidee, fiercely. "I will get my revenge upon her thus. Presently, when she is asleep and dreaming perhaps of her home and her lover, I will steal in upon her and clasp my hands around her white little neck and strangle her to death."

"It is settled, then," said old Peter, with a fiendish chuckle of delight. "Get our pipes, now, Haidee, and let us sit up and wait till the time comes."

Lily Lawrence dropped down upon the floor and lay there like one already smitten with death.

"Oh, God!" she thought, "if I only had not listened I might indeed have been asleep, and death might have stolen on me unconsciously. How dreadful to lie here and wait for death each moment."

She lay there shuddering and trying to pray as the fatal minutes crept on, each one bearing away on its swift sands the brief span of precious life yet left her.

At each movement in the next room she shivered and started, thinking that old Haidee was about to come forth to execute her murderous task.

How long she lay there weeping and praying she never knew, but at length she heard the clock in the lower hall strike ten.

The next instant stealthy steps came gliding through the hall to her door.

Already she seemed to feel the horrible clutch of old Haidee's hands about her warm, white throat, pressing out the life.