"Oh, God spare me!" breathed Lily, clasping her hands in agony as she heard the key grate in the lock, and the hand of the murderess turning the knob of the door.

At that instant, before the door opened, while but a moment intervened between Lily and a horrible death, a loud and hurried knocking was distinctly heard down-stairs. It was so startling, coming upon the previous utter stillness, that old Haidee darted back to her own room in a fright, and directly she and her husband were heard making a shuffling descent of the stairs. Lily arose upon her feet in a tumult of hope.

"Who can it be?" she murmured. "Can it be possible that rescue is at hand?"

The revulsion from despair and terror to instant hope was too great to be borne.

Her slight form wavered an instant, then unconsciousness stole upon her and she fell prostrate on the floor.

In the meantime the old couple down-stairs, after removing bolts and bars, admitted, to their astonishment and dismay, the two conspirators, Pratt and Colville.

"You were not expecting me, eh?" said Doctor Pratt, with a laugh at Haidee's astonished look as she blinked at him beneath the flaring candle she held aloft. "Well, that cursed hound of yours was not expecting me either. He had nearly taken a piece out of my throat before he recognized my voice and became pacific. I had thought he must have known me at once. Look you, I shall put a bullet in his head some day, the blood-thirsty brute!"

"If you do, you will destroy the best safeguard you have against the escape of your prisoner," said Haidee, shortly.

"Ah! well, let him live a little longer then, but you must teach him not to forget his old friends," was the careless reply.

"You come late, doctor. We did not expect you, and were about retiring," said old Peter.

"Yes, we thought it better to come by stealth," said Pratt, shortly. "The fact is, Colville has taken it in his head that we are watched by some fellow, and it suits us to be wary just now. We wish to see Miss Lawrence at once. Is she safe and well?"

"As safe and well as usual. Starvation does not seem to agree with her very well," answered Haidee, leading the way up-stairs with her flaring candle.

"It will break her proud spirit all the sooner," said Colville, brutally, as he followed them.

Haidee stepped into the hall, opened Lily's door and entered, nearly falling over the prostrate form of the girl. She started back in dismay.

"Why, what—the devil!" cried Pratt, entering behind her. "What has happened to the girl? Is she dead?"

He knelt down, felt the pulse, and laid his ear over the heart as Colville and Peter entered after him.

"She is in a faint," he said, looking up into Colville's frightened face. "Our arrival was most opportune. Haidee, bring wine or whatever stimulants you have in the house. Her vitality is exhausted. The late regimen has been too severe for her weak constitution, perhaps."

He straightened the still form out upon the floor and applied a vial of pungent smelling salts to her nostrils. In a moment life came fluttering back, and Lily's languid gaze opened upon the faces of her enemies. The white lids closed again and a heart-wrung sigh drifted over her lips.

Doctor Pratt lifted the light form in his arms and laid her upon the bed as Haidee entered, carrying a glass of wine. He took it from her hand and held it to the lips of his patient.

"Drink this, Miss Lawrence," he said, "you are weak and faint; it will revive you."

She drank it thirstily, and felt a momentary thrill of returning strength. Rising on her elbow she looked at them all languidly.

"You time your visit late, gentlemen," she said, with a slight inflection of scorn on the concluding word.

"We are obliged to consult our own convenience rather than yours, Lily. Pardon our informal and ill-timed visit," said Mr. Colville, coming forward to her side.

She flashed a look of scorn upon him, but deigned no reply. He turned to the two old people who stood waiting.

"You may go," he said. "We will apprise you when we are about to leave."

"No, let them remain," said Lily, imperiously. "I have something to say to you, Mr. Colville, and I desire that these, your friends, may hear it."

Old Peter and Haidee looked at each other in some trepidation at her words and manner, but stood still, curious and a little frightened.

"My friends," muttered Colville, indignantly; "Miss Lawrence, I do not choose my friends from among such rabble, I assure you!"

"Do you not?" said she, contemptuously. "Yet if you had a precious treasure, Mr. Colville, and desired to guard it very carefully, you would entrust it to your best friends rather than your enemies—would you not?"

"Assuredly," he answered, wondering what she meant by her strange words and manner.

"You would? and yet you have professed to regard me as the thing most precious upon earth to you while you have given the lie to the assertion by leaving me here in the keeping of these wretches whom you disdain to own as your friends. Is it not so?"

He quailed before the scorn in her ringing voice, and the proud gesture of her lifted finger.

"You were safe with them," he muttered. "My dearest friends could not have guarded you more faithfully than they have done."

"It is false," she said, scornfully. "My life has been in constant jeopardy at their hands ever since I first entered this house."

"Miss Lawrence, you are raving," said Doctor Pratt. "These people have been paid to keep you here: it is to their interest to do so. And why should you fancy yourself in danger from them?"

"It is no fancy," she answered, coldly, while her scathing glance fell upon the cowering pair of interrupted murderers like lightning a moment, then returned to the faces of those she addressed. "I assure you, Doctor Pratt, and you, Mr. Colville, that your sudden coming interrupted her—I was on the point of being murdered by that woman there!"

"She lies!" cried Haidee and Peter, simultaneously.

"Silence, wretches!" thundered Dr. Pratt, furiously, reading guilt in their very faces. "Let the lady tell her story, then deny it if you can."

"It is the wine that has got into her head," whined Peter, abjectly.

"Silence, fellow! Now, go on with your story, Miss Lawrence," said the physician, impatiently.

Thus encouraged, Lily related every word of the frightful conversation that was indelibly stamped on her memory. There was no discrediting her assertions. The truth was unmistakable.

"She was just opening the door," concluded Lily, "when your loud knocking frightened her away. My relief from the pressure of over-wrought feeling was so great that I fainted when I attempted to stand up again!"

Dr. Pratt was foaming at the mouth with such furious rage that he could not speak. Colville, pale, trembling, with chattering teeth and staring eyes, found his voice first.

"Wretches! Devils!" he shouted, in a voice hoarse with passion, as he pointed to the door. "Go hide yourselves from my sight before I rend you limb from limb!"

The craven wretches slunk away and locked themselves into their room in wild fear lest the two infuriated men should put their threat into execution. Colville came forward and stood by the bedside of the young girl who had fallen back panting from weariness after her denunciation of the would-be murderers.

"Lily," he said abjectly, "I am so unnerved by the thought of the horrible fate you have just escaped that I can scarcely speak: but, believe me, my dearest girl, I thought you perfectly safe in this place, I never dreamed of such perfidy in these hired servants of my will."

"This is no time for apologies," interrupted the doctor abruptly. "Make them hereafter when you have more leisure and better command of your feelings. At present the most important thing is to remove Miss Lawrence from this house immediately, and place her in a safer retreat."

He drew Colville aside one moment.

"I know of a place a few miles from here," he whispered, "to which I have the entree. The place is a private mad-house, and is kept by a doctor who is a very particular friend of mine. I know of no better retreat at present for our fair little friend. He will receive her with pleasure, and you can represent her as insane if it pleases you."

"Let us take her there then," answered Colville.

Doctor Pratt took down a dark cloak with a hood attached which hung against the wall.

"Miss Lawrence," he said, quite courteously, "my carriage is at the gate and I find it necessary to remove you at once from the perils that environ you here. Put on this cloak and let us go. I will find means afterward to punish these wretches for their perfidy."

Lily obeyed in silence, and was led down between them to the waiting carriage.

The Leverets did not appear again, nor did the hound offer to molest them.

Placing their prisoner in the carriage the two confederates drove rapidly away over the country road.