Miss Rowan had left two hours ago, and had taken all her luggage and paid her bill. Apparently she had no idea of returning,—at any rate, she had not reserved any rooms. The hall-porter of the little hotel looked at Deane with some curiosity as he answered his rapid questions. The manageress came rustling out of her office and beamed on Deane, who had once stayed there for several weeks. She confirmed the information which he had already received, and supplemented it with a few further details.

"Miss Rowan paid her bill?" Deane asked.

"Certainly, sir," the manageress answered. "Miss Rowan was exceedingly particular about paying her accounts the moment they were presented."

"And she left no message?" Deane asked.

"None at all, sir," was the answer.

He noticed the gleam of curiosity in her eyes, and promptly altered his tactics. "Thank you very much," he said, turning away. "I quite understood that Miss Rowan was not leaving until this afternoon. My mistake, I daresay. By the bye, have you any instructions with regard to letters?"

"None," the manageress replied. "If any come, we shall keep them until we hear from her."

Deane turned away and reËntered his brougham. "I shall find a note at my rooms, I daresay," he remarked. "Good morning, Mrs. Merrygold."

His words were prophetic. He called at his rooms on his way to the club for lunch, and found a note there addressed to him in Winifred's handwriting:

Wednesday morning.

You will understand, of course, that this is the end. The jewels which you gave me I have returned to-day by registered post. One ring I have kept. It is, I think, the least valuable of any, but I did not wish to part with it. If you insist, however, it is always at your disposal.

I am going back where I belong—to the world which I should never have quitted. Everything has been a great mistake. Please understand that you are absolutely and entirely free in every way. I only trust that I may live long enough to atone in some measure for my folly.

Winifred Rowan.

Deane read this letter over a dozen times. One thing alone seemed clear. She had deserted him. She had not even waited for the final issue. She had fled from the sinking ship with a haste almost indecent. She had made no terms, suggested no compromise. Deane, when he thought the whole matter over, was still puzzled. Such precipitancy was not logical. If his hand was no longer strong enough to open the gates of the promised land, it could at least have lifted her up from the miseries of her past life. He found himself, after a study of her few lines, curiously depressed. She had gone—willingly—apparently without regret except for her wasted opportunities. He felt an emptiness in his life which he failed to understand. There had been nothing of the sort when Lady Olive had held out her hand and bidden him farewell. Was he getting sentimental? He set his teeth. Absurd! It was an episode happily concluded! Outside there was thunder in the air—a storm for him to face!...

His solicitor did not beat about the bush. "In the face of that document, Mr. Deane," he said, "the Treasury do not propose to proceed with the prosecution of Hefferom. Its existence, of course, throws altogether a different light upon the whole situation, whatever may be its exact legal worth. Hefferom was simply engaged upon a task of compromise. He had something solid behind him. There is not a shadow of evidence against him."

"Very well," said Deane, "let Hefferom go. I confess that when I sent to Scotland Yard I never anticipated that this particular document would ever come into evidence."

"You knew of its existence?" the lawyer asked.

"Sinclair himself showed it to me," Deane answered calmly. "So far as Sinclair himself was concerned the affair was a swindle, for it was he who recommended me to jump the claim—said he thought that there was some stuff there, but he had no money to work it. I let him off a hundred pounds he owed me, and took his advice. But that is ancient history. The mine is my property all right—or rather it was."

Mr. Hardaway listened with a grave face. "Deane," he said, "I hope and believe that you may be speaking the truth, but the original deed is in the hands of unscrupulous people. We had a notification this afternoon that a suit is about to be commenced against your corporation."

"The sooner the better," Deane answered. "We'll know where we are, at any rate. I claim that by the statute laws of the country that claim was forfeit. If it was not, then the inducing me to sink capital and work the claim was a damnable conspiracy."

"Your corporation fight with you, of course?" the lawyer asked.

"Of course," Deane answered. "What else could they do? We fight to the end!"

That night, shares in the Incorporated Gold-Mines Association stood at 90. At closing time the following day they stood at 74. A few lines in the paper had done it. An action had been started by Hefferom, and the legatees of the estate of the late Richard Sinclair, claiming as their property the Little Anna Gold-Mine. The thing had been talked about for some time, but now that it had actually occurred, people seemed none the less staggered. The city believed in Stirling Deane—it had believed in him so implicitly that in its heart it had never placed any faith in this cloud of rumors. Yet there it was now in black and white. It was no longer possible to speak of compromise. The matter was to be fought out in the open courts, and failure could spell nothing but ruin to one of the richest corporations in London. Deane's photograph was in all the papers—also the menu of a famous dinner which he gave to his directors. He sent a cheque for five thousand pounds to a hospital, and was reported to be going on the turf. The lawsuit he treated everywhere as a joke. He was careful always to wear the usual bunch of violets in his buttonhole, and to affect something of the dandy in his attire. His personal demeanor kept his shares at least ten points higher than they would otherwise have been.

But Deane, nevertheless, was in hell! He was badgered by his directors, worried by his lawyers, and underneath it all, and apart from his financial responsibilities, he was suffering from a sense of personal loss, a wound whose pain left him but little peace. He never stopped to admit to himself exactly what his suffering was. He sat for hours lost in thought, and his thoughts were always of that pale lady of his dreams who had stolen so abruptly from his arms, the girl who had played for a few weeks so strange a part in his life. He tried to find what had become of her, but in vain; she seemed to have completely vanished. He puzzled over her behavior until the lines in his face grew set and hard. Was she indeed ingrate—ready to abandon her strange bargain at the first whisper of disaster? Or had she some other reason? He had accepted her terms because of the power which she held—what if, at the loss of that power, she had taken it for granted that their bargain was cancelled, and had hurried away to avoid the shame of dismissal from him! It was just what she would do—perhaps just what she had done!

Deane was careful, during these days of probation, to attend at his office regularly, and to shrink from none of his customary duties. One afternoon his clerk brought him in a card.

"A young lady to see you, sir!" he announced.

Deane's heart gave a jump, the blood rushed through his veins, he was scarcely able to read the card which he had taken into his fingers with well-affected carelessness. Then the pain came, the black disappointment which seemed to turn his heart into a stone. It was not she! He found it hard to take any interest in this caller, and yet he felt that her coming was significant.

Miss Ruby Sinclair.

"You can show the young lady in, Gray," Deane ordered.

When she arrived, Deane scarcely knew her. She was expensively dressed from head to foot. She carried herself with an assurance which was almost overdone. The fashion of her dress and hat were certainly not chosen with a view to being overlooked. She was very modern—she reminded him exactly of a young lady in a musical comedy with whom he had once had a slight acquaintance. He would scarcely have been surprised had he found, when she lifted her veil, that her eyebrows were blackened.

"You didn't expect to see me, of course," she said, holding his hand for a moment, and looking at him steadfastly. "May I sit down?"

"Of course," he answered.

She chose the easy-chair, and crossed her legs with a good deal of rustle and a considerable display of black silk stocking.

She looked at him curiously. "Are you still angry with me?" she asked.

"Well, I don't usually bear malice," he answered, "but I can scarcely forgive your method of dealing with Miss Rowan!"

"Or its results?" she asked, with a little laugh. "Well, I came out on the top, anyhow, and you must remember, Mr. Deane, that I was desperate,—you don't know how desperate," she continued, after a moment's pause. "I hadn't a shilling left in the world!—not a shilling!—not a friend! And somewhere in London there was wealth that belonged to me!"

"That," Deane remarked dryly, "is a matter which is as yet undecided."

"Well, I judge by facts," she answered with a little laugh. "Lawyers don't usually throw money away, do they? They're willing to advance me all I want on the security of the Little Anna Gold-Mine."

Deane smiled upon her genially. "My mine," he remarked.

"No!" she declared,—"the property of the legatees of Richard Sinclair!"

Deane shook his head. "My dear young lady," he said, "you were more in your element when you walked bareheaded upon the sands of Rakney, and saved me from a wetting, than in your present pose."

"And you," she declared, "were nicer to me, a great deal, for those few days."

"Naturally," he answered, smiling. "How can I be particularly amiable to a young lady who is trying to ruin me?"

She looked at him earnestly. In her fashionable attire she presented, indeed, a very different appearance from the eager, brown-skinned girl, with the shapely limbs and delightful carriage, whom he had first seen at Rakney. Yet he fancied that she was trying to reawaken his earlier impressions of her,—innocent of vanity as he was, he could not misunderstand her appealing gaze!

"I do not want to ruin you," she declared. "I do not want to do anything of the sort. Isn't there enough for both of us? Why should we fight?"

He sighed. "How can we compromise?" he asked. "The mine does not belong to me any longer. I sold it years ago to the Incorporated Gold-Mines Association."

"You could not sell what didn't belong to you," she objected.

"They paid me the money for it, at any rate," he answered.

"If I win," she asked, "who will lose the money?"

"The Incorporated Gold-Mines Association," he answered, "but they would have a claim upon me. I suppose, eventually, that I should."

She held out her hand—no longer brown and stained with seaweed, but delicately gloved, perfumed, elegant. "Let us be friends," she said. "I am sorry I was rough to your little ally! I couldn't help it. She was in my way. I chose the only means. We needn't consider her,—you and I are different sort of people. We know what we want. I am not only a money grubber. I want the rest of life, the whole thing,—the music, the poetry, the passion! Remember my wretched, starved existence! Do you wonder that I am on fire to pass on to the other things. It isn't the money—your money or any one else's! I want life! I want the wine and the spices! I want the dregs! Can't you understand? You must!—you must!"

Her passionate eyes sought his, her body swayed towards him. Deane looked downwards upon his blotter. In the outer office he could hear the clicking of typewriters, the subdued murmur of voices. Through the half-opened window came floating in the everlasting chorus,—the falling footsteps upon the pavement, the jingling of hansom bells, the far-off roar of the heavier traffic. All these things seemed to him curiously unreal. He was conscious only of the intensity of the moment, the pleading of her eyes, the warm breath upon his cheeks. He heard the rustling of her skirts. He felt that she was rising from her chair. Then he braced himself for his effort.

"My dear young lady," he said,—"if you really want to compromise—for a moderate amount—I will send for my lawyer. We cannot arrange this thing by ourselves."

She rose to her feet, but for a moment she was speechless. When he looked at her face, he found it almost unrecognizable. She dropped her veil quickly, but from behind it the flash of her eyes was in itself a threat.

"I am sorry," he said lamely. "I hope you understand."

She turned to the door, and passed out without a word.