Various

A NARRATIVE.
By the Author of "An Unlaid Ghost."

To E. P. T.
"So little payment for so great a debt."

CHAPTER I.

"O Death in Life! the days that are no more."

It would have been no surprise to his friends had Loyd Morton speedily followed his young wife to the grave. Their brief union had been a very communion of souls—one of those rare experiences in wedlock for jealousy of which Destiny may almost be pardoned. Small wonder, therefore, that his grief was of that speechless description which "whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break." For a time it was thought he could not survive his dumb despair; or, if he did, that melancholia would claim him an easy victim. It is needless to affirm that he escaped the wreck of both life and reason, since the existence of this chronicle attests so much.

The manner of his escape does not appear; though it was astutely surmised, and perhaps with some show of probability, that, being an expert and practitioner in disorders of the nervous system, he healed himself, albeit physicians of experience may entertain contrary views concerning the feasibility of the feat. At all events, he came forth to face his world again, a sad, pallid being indued with indomitable perseverance and fortitude; more than ever zealous in the discharge of his engagements; as never before devoted to his profession. But a sympathetic eye could not fail to detect the feverish abandonment of self, the positively voracious hungering for constant activity, which were in themselves a pathetic commentary upon the frame of mind in which his bereavement had left him.

He had become the wraith-like semblance of the original young Doctor Morton, once so buoyant, so pampered by favoring Fate—in a word, so worthy of righteous envy. Alas! what eternities to him were those hours of lonely seclusion when there were no visits to pay and no clients to awaken the sepulchral echoes of his house with summons at the bell—dark hours of nothingness, blank eras of forlorn distress!

Yet, let there be no suspicion that Loyd Morton's was an unmanly grief; it was no more a lachrymose distemper than it was a stubborn setting of his face against his lot. His sorrow was far too genuine to be self-conscious, and, if he brooded in his despair, it was simply because something had gone out of his life infinitely more precious than life itself; something that he would have given his life to recover, since absolute annihilation seemed to him preferable to this existing condition of death in life.

His love had been a first, all-absorbing passion; it had introduced into his hitherto prosaic existence a light and genial warmth that had set the soft glow of the rose upon its humblest attributes; it had afforded him an object to live for, a goal worthy his ambition, and had filled the void of indefinable longing with that sense of completeness which is ever the result of a perfect alliance between sympathy and sincerity of purpose.

He had met his affinity during his student-days; had wooed, and won, and married her in the first flush of that youthful affection. Possibly the old-time shades of Stuttgart lent a quaint and fascinating glamour to the courtship; but, if glamour there were, it became the permanent atmosphere that hallowed their marital relations when the work of life began at home, stripped of all romantic association. Indeed, their honeymoon never waned to setting; it simply suffered total eclipse.

It was fortunate that, at the period of his overwhelming bereavement, the young physician chanced to be in vogue. American nervous systems are notoriously more subject to disorder than any on the face of the earth; and he who ministers successfully to, or rather deciphers cleverly, these occult riddles of the human anatomy of the West, is not only an exceedingly busy, but an eminently fortunate, man. Day and night he is at the beck and call of those whose unstrung nerves require tuning; while, if his patience is forced to pay the penalty of his devotion, the shade of Midas, by way of recompense, seems indefatigable in its superintendence of the filling of his coffers.

To repute and popularity had Loyd Morton attained in an exceptional degree; and, for the reason that a host of wayward nervous systems could not be induced to respect the season of his grief, he was fairly dragged out of his seclusion, and made to identify himself with the real or imaginary woes of his patients. And it was fortunate that it was so, since on this account, only in the solitude of those chambers, about which clung the memory of his lost one like a benison, had he opportunity to listen to the lament of his anguished heart. And the monotonous cry of that heart was ever, "Paula, Paula, Paula! My wife!"

Surely there could have been no rest for her soul if that wail of affliction penetrated the celestial sphere to the enjoyment of which her blameless life entitled her. Far from contributing to her repose, such grieving emphasis must have fettered her spirit to earth.

"I feel," he told himself at the close of his first year of widowhood, "as though I was environed by a sere wilderness, over whose trackless wastes I must trudge until I meet the ashy horizon and find the end. No ray of light, no star to twinkle hope; always these weeping clouds of grizzled pallor! Only one comfort is vouchsafed me—fatigue. Fortunately, fatigue means sleep, and sleep oblivion!"

Lost in dreary revery, he sat by the window of his study one April evening, with the melancholy spring-tide gloaming about him. A nesting-bird twittered, and the scent of the sodden earth filtered in at the half-open casement.

Two years ago that day he had watched a German mother raise the bridal wreath from her daughter's brow, the happy ceremonial over, and had listened, as in a rapturous dream, to the words: "She is thine. Take her; but, oh! my son, guard, guide, and cherish her, for the sake of her fond mother, when the boundless sea shall roll between us!"

One year agone to an hour, and in the dismal after-glow of a rainy sunset, he had stood beside the open grave, his agonized heart-throbs echoing the wet clods as they fell upon the casket that contained the last fragment of his shattered hopes—his broken idol screened from his yearning gaze by hideous glint of plate and polished wood.

Nuptial and burial rites celebrated with the self-same ghastly flowers within a twelve-month! A wreath for a bride, a chaplet for a corpse, fragrant tokens for the quick and the dead—and so the chapter ended!

The monotonous drip of the eaves, the fitful sough of the miasmatic wind, the odor of the humid garden-plot, the blood-red hem of the leaden clouds whose skirts trailed languidly along the western horizon—all, all so vividly recalled that grievous hour of sepulture, so painfully accentuated its anniversary, that, in very desolation of soul, he exclaimed,

"My God! how unutterably lonely and wretched I am! What would I not give for one word, one glimpse, for the slightest assurance that we are not doomed to eternal separation; that the closing of the eyes in death does not signify instant annihilation!"

The sudden clang of the office-bell interrupted his utterance and almost deprived him of breath, so significant seemed the punctuation to his thought. He rose hastily and, contrary to his custom, preceded the servant through the hall.

Upon throwing open the outer door, he found himself confronted by a woman, closely veiled and clothed in black, her tall and slender figure standing forth in strong relief against the lurid gloom of the evening.

For an instant silence prevailed, save for the retreating footsteps of the servant as he returned to his quarters.

"You are Doctor Loyd Morton," the woman began in a tone low yet perfectly distinct, a tone of assertion rather than inquiry. "Can you give me a few moments' consultation?"

"These are my office-hours, madam," he replied, a feeling of mingled curiosity and repulsion taking possession of him.

"I know; but I am told that you are in great request. Shall we be undisturbed?"

"Quite so. Will you come in?"

He stepped aside and she entered, raising her veil as she did so, though the darkness of the hall prevented his determining what manner of countenance she wore. The twilight that penetrated the office through uncurtained windows, however, discovered a delicate, pale face framed in tendrils of soft chestnut hair and alight with eyes of the same indescribable tint. It was not a strictly beautiful face, according to the canons of beauty, yet it was one of those faces one glance at which invites another, until the spell of fascination claims the beholder.

Loyd Morton had had impressionable days, but for obvious reasons they were at an end. Still, he was interested; and the better to study his visitor he was about to strike a match for the purpose of lighting a lamp, when the woman, with swift divination of his intent, exclaimed:

"I prefer the twilight," adding; "I shall not detain you long."

Morton hesitatingly replaced the unignited match, and glanced at his visitor in a manner eloquent of his desire to learn the object of her call.

She noted the silent interrogation in her keen way, and, after a swift survey of the shadowy apartment, continued:

"I believe you assured me that we should be undisturbed."

"I did, madam."

"We are not alone, however."

"I beg your pardon; we are quite alone."

"No, no! there is a presence here beside our own—a presence so real, so powerful, as to be almost tangible. Oh, I understand that look of quick intelligence in your eyes and that wan smile lurking about your lips. You think me deranged; but I can easily prove to you that I am not."

She had spoken with unexpected fervor, and now paused, pressing her slender hand upon her eyes, as if to compose herself.

"I did not think to encounter one of my so-called crises here," she resumed presently; "but it is just as well, since by this means you can better form some diagnosis of my case. Do—do I afford you any hint? Perhaps, though, I do not interest you?"

His unresponsive silence seemed to dispirit her, for her eager eyes fell dejectedly.

"On the contrary, you interest me very much," he answered gently. "Will you be seated, and give me some information regarding your symptoms?"

She sank into the depths of a reclining-chair that faced the western window, while Morton seated himself directly before her.

The blood-red ribbon below the rainy clouds had faded and shrunk to a filament of pale olive that gave forth a weird, crepuscular glimmer. Objects as white as the pallid face among the cushions seemed to absorb the sensitive light and to grow yet more spectral through its aid.

"First of all," remarked the young doctor, "kindly give me your name and such information as you please concerning your manner of life."

The voice that replied was low to drowsiness.

"My name is Revaleon—Margaret Revaleon. I am an Englishwoman by birth, and have been for three years the wife of a Canadian. Until my child was born I enjoyed, if not robust, at least excellent, health. For the past year I have lost ground; while these crises, as I call them, have debilitated and depressed me. Thinking a change would benefit me, I have come to visit friends in this neighborhood. In the hope of relief from my peculiar ailment, which I believe to be purely nervous, I have sought you out, attracted by your fame as an expert in disorders of the nervous system. Ah, doctor," she added, struggling against the lethargy that oppressed her, "do not tell me that I am incurable, since I have so much to live for!"

She seemed as ingenuous as a child; her unaffected manner being such as speedily wins its way to confidence. The sense of mingled repulsion and curiosity, which in the first moment she had exerted upon Morton, vanished, giving place to a feeling of genuine interest, perhaps concern.

"I see no reason for pronouncing the doom you dread, Mrs. Revaleon," he said; "not, at least, until you explain the 'peculiar ailment' you allude to."

Her eyes rested upon him with singular intentness—singular, because they appeared to lack speculation; that is to say, they were dilated, and luminous with a strange yellow light. At the same time it was evident that their regard was introspective, if speculative at all. Yet her reply followed with a full consciousness of the situation.

"I am unable to explain my malady," she said. "It consists in little more than what you see at this moment. If you cannot account for my present condition, it must continue a mystery to me."

He leaned forward and took her hands in his. They were icy cold, although they responded to his touch with an indescribable, nervous vibration.

"I have no trouble of the heart," she murmured, divining his suspicion; "I suffer this lowering of vitality only when in my present condition."

He released her hands and sat back in his chair, regarding her fixedly.

After a brief pause, he remarked,

"I must ask you to explain what you mean by your 'present condition.'"

"I mean, Dr. Morton, that, since you assure me that there is no presence in this room other than our own, I must possess some species of clairvoyance which my present condition induces. I assure you that there is a third presence here, that completely overshadows you! The consciousness of this fact freezes my very marrow and chills my being with the chill of death. It is by no means the first time that I have experienced these baleful sensations, or I should not have come to you for advice and counsel. Heaven knows I have no wish to be cognizant of these occult matters; but I am completely powerless to struggle against them. Ah, me!" she sighed wearily, "had I lived in the days of witchcraft, I suppose I should have been burned at the stake, despite my innocence."

Her voice sank to a whisper, and with its cadence her eye-lids drooped and closed; her breathing became stertorous, while her teeth ground each other with an appalling suggestion of physical agony, of which her body gave no evidence, being quiescent.

Startled though he was, Morton's first suspicion was that he was being made the victim of some clever imposture. This fancy, however, soon gave place to a belief that he was witnessing some sort of refined hysteria. Were the latter supposition the case, he felt himself equal to the emergency.

He leaned forward and placed his hands firmly upon the shoulders of the inanimate woman. "Enough of this, Mrs. Revaleon!" he exclaimed in a firm voice; "if I am to assist you, you must assist me! I command you to open your eyes!"

Not so much as a nerve vibrated in the corpse-like figure.

Aroused to a determination to thoroughly investigate the phenomenon, Morton quickly ignited a candle, and, holding it in one hand, he passed it close to the woman's eyes, the heavy lids of which he alternately raised with the fingers of his disengaged hand.

The eyes returned a dull, sightless glare to the test.

As a last resort to arouse consciousness or discover imposture, he produced a delicate lancet, and, raising the lace about the woman's wrist, he lightly scarified the cold, white flesh. Blood sluggishly tinged the slight abrasion, but, to his amazement, the immobility of his subject failed to relax one jot; yet the experiment was not entirely without result, since at the same moment a voice, muffled and far away in sound, broke the expectant silence:

"Loyd! Loyd!"

The twilight had deepened to actual gloom, which the flickering of the weird candle-light but served to accentuate. It seemed impossible to establish evidence to prove that it was the lips of Margaret Revaleon that had framed the thrilling utterance; indeed, the eerie tone could be likened to nothing human.

Spellbound the young doctor stood, doubting the evidence of his senses, yet listening—listening, until it came again, with positive enunciation and import,

"Loyd!"

"In Heaven's name, who calls?" he exclaimed.

"Paula, your wife."

CHAPTER II.

"We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps,
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven's distant lamps."

Though Loyd Morton had proved himself to be an ideal lover, he was at heart an eminently practical man. It is true he had not yet quite outlived that heyday of impressions that occurs somewhere in the first two score years of all lives. His eager mind grasped, with avidity, the various tenets of his day, and strove to fathom them; if he failed in any instance, he chose that happy mean between scepticism and positive unbelief, and waited for more light. He felt that he had been born into an epoch of rare progress, and that it behooved him to reject nothing worthy of intelligent consideration. There can be no doubt that the abundant sentiment in his nature lent itself to the higher phases of intellectual inquiry; yet, in justice, he could not be called a visionary person—at least, prior to this particular April evening. It was but natural that, in the wide circle of his professional and social acquaintanceship he should have fallen in with more than one disciple of the advanced theory of modern spiritualism. To converse with all such, he lent a courteous, even interested, ear. He found himself not infrequently listening in amazement to certain thrilling experiences related by the initiated, and, as a result, he promised himself the satisfaction of investigating the matter for himself some day; but into his busy existence that day had not as yet found its way. Consequently, he had formed no opinion whatever as regarded the so-called communion between the living and the dead. As has been said, his interest in the question had been excited—more, possibly, than comported with the distinction of his professional position; but it is doubtful if he would have rejected the investigation simply on this account.

Here, however, was an instance fairly thrust upon him, which startled, amazed, and mystified him. That the woman, Margaret Revaleon, was in a state of complete coma, he had satisfied himself beyond peradventure. Accomplished physicians are not apt to be deceived regarding the results of infallible tests; and yet here was a subject, absolutely unconscious, speaking not only intelligently, but with a degree of appositeness that, considering the circumstances, was appalling.

Thoroughly alive to the situation, not to say excited, yet sufficiently master of himself to keep well within the pale of scepticism, Morton resumed his seat, which he had quitted in some agitation when informed that he was face to face with the invisibility of his wife, and disposed himself to probe the mystery.

Mrs. Revaleon had ceased to breathe stertorously; a complacent, almost smiling expression had taken possession of her features, and she had leaned forward in her chair, with outstretched hands, though her eyes remained closed.

"Give me your hands, Loyd," she said in the same murmurous tone, that retained not a vestige of her normal voice, "will you not welcome me back?"

Morton relinquished his hands into the keeping of that cold clasp, in silence.

"O Loyd, my husband," the voice resumed, "can you not believe that it is I, Paula, your wife?"

"What would be the consequence of my saying that I cannot believe?" he responded with constraint.

"It would make it all the more difficult for me to convince you that I am indeed with you."

"Then I will say that I believe."

"I am clairvoyant. You cannot mislead a spirit capable of reading your mind as though it were an open book. Ah, what can I do to conquer your incredulity? What can I say to convince you that I am as truly with you at this moment as I was at any moment while in the flesh? It is your sacred love for me that has attracted my spirit to this fortuitous reunion. Oh, do not doubt me!—rather assist me, if ever you loved me, Lolo!"

He started then, and his dark eyes shone like twin stars. "How came you by that name?" he demanded unsteadily—"a name never uttered in the presence of any living being, save myself?"

"How came I by that endearing epithet!" the voice answered. "Did not my absorbing fondness for you suggest it? Was it not the coinage of my affectionate fancy? I beseech you, separate this medium, through whom I speak, from my personality. Understand that this woman is practically dead, while it is I, Paula Morton, who actuate her brain, her voice, her very being."

"My God!" exclaimed Morton, "this is beyond my comprehension!"

"Let perfect faith control you while this brief communion lasts; then take refuge in scepticism—if you can. You are so unhappy, so wretched, without me, that I should think you would be glad to meet me more than half way."

"I cannot see you, if it is you."

"Another question of faith! But it matters not; you will believe in time. So you miss me?"

"My life is a void without my wife," he replied.

"What divine love! Loyd, you and I constitute an affinity. I know now how rare are earthly affinities; that is, unions of souls that are destined to endure through all eternity. Every soul born into existence is allotted an affinity, which sooner or later it will meet, in accordance with divine ordinance. These unions of kindred souls, attuned, as they are, to surpassing harmony, are rare upon earth, though they may occur, as in our case; but, generally, years—even ages—may transpire ere these ineffable coalitions are consummated. Our souls are affined; we have no need to search. We are simply undergoing a temporary separation. You are coming to me; I am waiting for you. I rejoice in the thought, and the knowledge gives me strength to control this medium, who brings me into such intimate communion with you."

At this juncture in the extraordinary interview, a bell rang violently, and a moment later a light rap sounded upon the door, a preconcerted signal between the doctor and his servant, announcing the fact that another visitor demanded admittance.

It is not surprising that Morton was too deeply absorbed to notice the threatening intrusion.

"If—if I thought," he said, his hesitation marking the intensity of his emotion, "if I suspected that I was being made the dupe of some plausible imposture, the butt of some sort of nameless sorcery, I—"

"Loyd, Loyd," wailed the voice, "you wrong me, wrong me grievously! Your incredulity dooms me to such unhappiness as I have never known."

"You imply that you have known some degree of unhappiness! You were never unhappy upon earth; are you so now—wherever you may be?"

"Oh, no! I am supremely happy."

"Supremely happy," he echoed, jealously; "supremely happy, though separated from me! and yet you term your love for me divine!"

"It is divine, divine as all things heavenly are. For the perfecting of such love as mine the evidence of the senses is not requisite; indeed, it would prove antagonistic. Your earthly eyes are blind; but from my vision have fallen away the scales, which fact renders my spiritual sight clairvoyant. I can see you at all times, and can be with you with the celerity of the birth of thought. Where then, in what resides the separation for me?"

"For you!" he cried, passionately; "ay, but for me! I am blind; these mortal scales are upon my eyes, I am not clairvoyant. The wings of thought refuse to raise me above this present slough of despond into which I have fallen; they flutter with me back among the memories of the dead past, but that is all! I am still living in the flesh, and heaven knows that this bitter separation is a reality to me!"

Thereupon ensued a momentary silence, which was ere long ruptured by the low, gentle voice.

"Loyd," it whispered, "you bind me to earth; your love fetters my spirit!"

"If your love were unchanged," he murmured, disconsolately, "there would be no bondage in such magnetism!"

"My love, having been spiritualized, is far more absorbing than ever it was."

"Then why should you complain that the attraction of my love binds you to earth? If it is the spirit of my wife that addresses me at this moment, as you pretend, if your love for me is greater and purer than it was upon earth—which, as God is my judge, I can scarcely credit—why should you not be happier in this sphere, where I am, than in the realm of heaven?"

"Simply because it is not heaven here."

"But I am here!"

"For a time only, for a little space; and there is no reckoning of time in eternity. Soon you will be with me—forever."

"Paula! Would I were with you now!"

"Hush! That wish is impious."

"Ah, but think! I have the means at my command to send my soul into eternity, within the twinkling of an eye!"

"Into eternity, but not to me. Oh, my husband, there is no sin accounted so heinous as the taking of a God-given life. You must live on until your appointed hour, then come into the courts of heaven with hands unstained, with soul unsullied."

Raised to a pinnacle of exaltation which, in his normal condition, he would have deemed unattainable to one of his stanch rationality, Morton exclaimed:

"I cannot live without you! After what I have just heard, which renders my dreary existence tenfold more dreary, I will not hold myself responsible for what I may do. Oh, Paula, my wife, my wife! if you would not have me commit a crime against myself which may separate us for all eternity, come back to me!"

"I will come back to you," responded the voice.

"Oh, I do not mean enveloped in this ghostly invisibility!" he cried.

"No, Loyd, I will return to you in the flesh."

Supreme as had been the moment of his supplication, he had retained sufficient reason not to expect a concession; consequently he felt that he was taking leave of his wits as he gasped,

"You will return to me—in the flesh!"

"In the flesh. Before the dawn of another day you shall take a living body in your arms and know that it is animated by my soul."

His clasp tightened upon the hands he held.

"Am I mad? Do I hear aright?" he faltered, his utterance thick with wonder; "in God's name, how will you effect such reincarnation?"

There was a momentary pause; and then the voice replied with some note of omen in its firmness:

"Mark the test I am about to give to you! You will be called to attend a dying woman—you are called; already is the messenger here; a woman's soul is trembling upon the threshold of eternity. If you are alone with her when that soul takes wing, my spirit will instantly take its place, and your skill will do the rest, accomplish the resurrection of that body and secure our further communion. But there may be consequences over which I shall have no control; those consequences you will have to confront. Are you willing to accept the chances?"

"Willing! All I ask is the opportunity to meet them!"

"Very well. You have conjured me back to earth. With you rests the responsibility!"

The voice expired in a sigh, and the hitherto quiescent figure of Margaret Revaleon shuddered, while her hands trembled convulsively. Thereupon followed the stertorous breathing again, and the painful gnashing of the teeth. An instant later her great hazel eyes flashed open, and rested with a sightless stare upon the flickering candle.

"Oh, where am I?" she moaned languidly, her voice having retaken its normal tone; then came a flash of intelligence like the nascent tremor of dawn; at last full consciousness of her surroundings.

"Oh, is it you, Doctor Morton?" she faltered, smiling faintly; "really I had forgotten you. Where have I been? What do you think of my case? Is it hopeless? By your grave look I infer it must be."

At this moment the signal at the door was repeated more peremptorily.

Morton gathered his energies with an effort.

"Excuse me for a moment, Mrs. Revaleon," he stammered, with difficulty commanding himself, "I will return to you presently."

With a nervous step, quite at variance with his wonted calm demeanor, he hastened into the ante-chamber, closing the door behind him.

The gas burned brightly, and its flare dazzled his sight accustomed to the twilight that reigned within the study; but he was well able to recognize the young gentleman who hastened forward at his approach.

"Oh, Loyd!" exclaimed the visitor, with an accent of mingled agony and reproach, "what an eternity you have kept me waiting! In heaven's name, come to us at once! Romaine is dying!"

"Romaine—dying!" echoed Morton.

"We fear so; God grant that we may be mistaken! But will you come at once?"

"At once of course, Hubert."

"Then follow me; the carriage is waiting."

The young man had reached the door even as he spoke.

Morton paused in the midst of the brilliantly lighted room, every vestige of color fled even from his lips.

"Merciful Powers!" he murmured, "am I waking from some hallowed dream or from some infernal nightmare? No, no! this is the test she bid me mark! It is no fantasy! it is reality!"

Even in his haste he was mindful of his waiting client, and flung open the door of his study. A sharp draught of air from the open casement extinguished the candle that burned within, leaving in its stead the lance of a pale young moon.

Bathed in the aqueous light stood Margaret Revaleon, regarding him with wistful eyes.

"Well, doctor," she began, "you have returned to pass sentence upon me?"

"By no means, Mrs. Revaleon," he answered, hastily; "I have only to say that your case is a singular one. While I have no reason to believe that any real danger will ever result from the 'condition' of which you complain, I am forced to admit that I know of no treatment for you at this time. I beg you to excuse me now, as I am called to attend a critical case. My servant will wait upon you."

And with these hasty words, Morton took his departure.

CHAPTER III.

"Now help, ye charming spells and periapts!"

Sir Francis Bacon maintained that every man is a debtor to his profession, and that in seeking to receive countenance and profit therefrom, he should of duty endeavor, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto. Undoubtedly every genuine professor realizes this obligation; while if he be of a truly appreciative nature, he will not lose sight of a concomitant duty towards those whose favor has lent encouragement to the practice of his art or profession, especially at the period of its incipience.

Such a debt of gratitude did young Doctor Loyd Morton owe the Effingham family.

Sidney Effingham had been a magnate in his day; a man who had freely given his distinguished influence towards the refinement of our, in some respects, too rapid Republican growth, and he had gone down to the tomb of his ancestors, leaving behind him worthy exemplars in the persons of his widow, his son and daughter. There had been an elder son, Malcolm by name, whose unwavering friendship for Morton in boyhood and early manhood had opened an avenue to the penniless student and orphan into the bosom of the Effingham family; but Malcolm Effingham had died of the Roman fever in Italy, and it had been Morton's melancholy duty, as the young gentleman's travelling-companion and guest, to close his friend's eyes in death and return to America with his body.

The untimely demise of his elder son had proved a grievous stroke to Sidney Effingham; yet he bore up bravely, in a measure transferring his thwarted interest to Malcolm's friend and class-mate. Thus it came about that Loyd Morton owed the perfecting of his education to Mr. Effingham, who insisted that the young man should return to Europe at his expense and complete his studies. Moreover, such was his almost morbid affection for all that pertained to his dead son, Sidney Effingham bequeathed a comfortable living to Morton, thus acknowledging him, as it were, an adopted son.

The death of this beneficent gentleman occurred during Morton's courtship in Germany, precipitating his marriage and immediate return to his native land. Though the widow welcomed young Mrs. Morton with maternal fervor, to Morton she frankly expressed her regret that he had placed himself beyond the possibility of assuming Malcolm's vacant place in her household.

"But my interest in you remains unabated," she assured the young physician, "and it shall be my pleasure to do all that lies in my power to insure you success in your chosen profession. Otherwise, leaving my personal affection for you out of the account, I should fail in my duty as the wife and mother of those who held your welfare and success so closely at heart."

And Serena Effingham had acted in accordance with her noble convictions and promise. Thanks to her unflagging interest in his behalf, Morton seemed to spring with winged feet into the coveted haven of fashionable patronage. There is no gainsaying the fact that he maintained his position by consummate ability, and equally there is no disputing the fact that he was fortunate in the possession of such eminently influential backing.

As has been stated, such were his engagements that but few hours of the day or night could he call his own, even during the period of his bereavement. His success had been phenomenal, two brief years having assured his standing among the leading physicians of his day.

This great burden of obligation weighed upon the young doctor's mind, as he sat beside Malcolm Effingham's brother while the carriage-wheels dashed through the murky streets of the town and out over the sodden road that led to Belvoir,—weighed upon his mind to the partial obliteration of his recent weird experience with Margaret Revaleon.

Romaine Effingham—dying!

Oh, it seemed incredible! How was it possible to couple that brilliant spirit with the grim austerity of Death?

"And yet," he thought, with a sickening pang at his heart, "should she die now, in her nineteenth year, she will have enjoyed as many days as were vouchsafed my poor Paula."

Paula! Merciful heaven, how came it about that he should feel at that moment as though he were summoned to Paula's bedside and not Romaine's?

With a start that was half-guilty, half-superstitious, he laid his hand upon the arm of the mutely eloquent figure at his side.

"Hubert!" he exclaimed in the tone of one who would fain drown the voice of conscience, "Hubert, my dear boy, why do you not speak? Are you so anxious?"

"Anxious!" replied young Effingham, "I am almost distracted. What will become of us should anything happen to Romaine! O Loyd, what was I to mother compared with father and Malcolm? what am I to her compared with Romaine?"

"You are unjust to yourself, Hubert, you——"

"Hush, hush! Such words from you, who know us so well, sound like lame condolence! I cannot bear it while there is a glimmer of hope. By and by, should there be no help for it, I may be glad to listen to you; but not now—oh, not now!"

"Hubert," Morton remarked after a momentary pause, "you must be calm. In the few minutes that remain to us I must learn from you something concerning Romaine's condition."

"God knows I am willing to help you all I can."

"What has happened to her? How is she affected?"

"We were sitting at dinner, Romaine being in her usual health and spirits. Indeed, I do not remember when she has been so gay. I suppose her high spirits were caused by the receipt of a letter to-day from Colley, stating that he should sail from Havre by the following steamer, and might outstrip his letter."

At mention of that name, which was simply the nickname of Colston Drummond, the affianced lover of Romaine Effingham, Loyd Morton shuddered involuntarily.

"Well, well," he urged, "what then?"

"Well, in the midst of a burst of laughter—you know her laugh, so like a peal of bells—Romaine suddenly turned ashy pale, and, with a gasp, sank back in her chair. My God, I shall never forget my sensation at that moment! She looked as father looked when he died."

"What did you do?"

"Do! We did everything that should be done in such an emergency. Mother was as firm as a rock; but I saw the look of despair in her eyes as she turned to me, saying, 'Go for Loyd, with all speed; go yourself, and bring him back!'—I have secured you; I have done all that I can. The rest remains with you."

"With me!" gasped Morton. "Do you mean to say that you have not called in some other physician at such a crisis?"

"We have perfect confidence in you, Loyd."

"Good heavens! This is too great a responsibility! I am not—not—" He was going to add, "I am not equal to such an emergency. You must send at once for some other doctor," when he paused abruptly, turning ghastly pale as the words recurred to him, unbidden as the mournful rustling of the leaves of memory,

"A woman's soul is trembling upon the threshold of eternity. If you are alone with her when that soul takes wing, my spirit will instantly take its place, and your skill will do the rest. Accomplish the resurrection of that body, and secure our further communion."

Consultation with another physician might be the means of saving Romaine Effingham's life! After all, what mattered it if he were destined to resurrect her body, though henceforth it was to become the domicile of a soul for the recovery of which he would have sacrificed twenty thousand Romaines?

Consequently he bit his lips in silence. And at that moment the massive gateway of Belvoir gave back a sepulchral echo of the grinding carriage-wheels, while lights glimmered wanly beyond the fog-trailed lawn.

An exceedingly charming girl was Romaine Effingham. She possessed that unconscious grace which resides in the joy of youth and ease of heart. She was beautiful, accomplished, brilliant, and when, upon the eve of his departure for Europe, her engagement to Colston Drummond was announced, the fashionable world joined its plaudits and congratulations to its acknowledgments for the favor of having been permitted to witness at least one genuine example of the eternal fitness of things.

Not to have known Romaine Effingham personally, may be accounted a positive deprivation; while, to have been ignorant of the existence of "Colley" Drummond, that estimable corypheus of patrician youth, was equivalent to confessing one's self quite unknown; and that without a shade of irony, since Colston Drummond was, in the best sense, a man of that world which has reason to consider itself well-born. So much having been admitted, one may feel inclined to sympathize with the legion who loved Romaine and admired her lover.

It was a grievous sight indeed, to see the fair young girl low lying in her dainty chamber, with the pallid sign of death on lip and cheek. Equally pitiful was it to mark the mute anguish of that noble mother, whose life had been one era of devotion to her children. They had been her very idols—her treasures beyond price. She had passed whole days and nights in attendance upon them during their slight juvenile ailments—days and nights which to fashionable women of her ilk are precious epochs of social dissipation. To have gone into society leaving one of her children ill at home, it mattered not how trifling the indisposition, would have been as utter an impossibility to Serena Effingham as for her to have regarded with an indifferent eye the present deathlike syncope of her beautiful daughter. As she had been faithful in the minutiÆ of maternal duty, so was she proportionally constant in greater exigencies. With eyes haggard with suspense, she watched the wan face upon the pillow, while her heart-beats told her how the laggard moments dragged themselves away—away from the happy past, on towards the menacing future.

A sepulchral silence had settled upon the house, portentous in its profundity; consequently the slightest sound seemed almost painfully magnified. Naturally, then, the roll of the carriage-wheels upon the flagging before the principal entrance sounded an alarm to the anxious watcher's heart.

"They have come at last!" she breathed. "God grant that they come not in vain!"

With the prayer trembling upon her lips, she met Loyd Morton at the head of the staircase. She noted the deadly pallor upon the young doctor's face and the unusual dilation of his eyes; but she thought they argued his keen anxiety, as, in a certain sense, they did. She gave him her hand, with a firm clasp, and dimly noted that his were as cold as ice. She drew him to her and kissed him, heedless of the fact that he failed to return the salute.

"You must save her, Loyd," she murmured. "Our hope is built upon your skill. If ever you loved us, have pity upon us now!"

He made no reply to the solemn injunction; perhaps words failed him at that supreme moment, perhaps he felt silence to be the wiser course. She relinquished her hold upon him, and he crossed the hall. At the door of the dimly lighted chamber he paused and turned abruptly. The rustle of her dress betrayed the fact that she was close in his wake.

"Permit me to make an examination," he faltered, with evident constraint; "I—I will then report." The strained circumstances seemed to invest his words with a defiant ring—at least, her woman's instinct suggested the fancy; but she respected his request and joined her son, where he stood, at the head of the staircase, leaning upon his arm for support. From where they stood, mother and son could see Morton bending above the inanimate form, could watch him as he lowered his head close to the pillow, holding it in that position for what seemed a very eternity.

Was he listening for some token of fluttering vitality? Was he applying some remedy?

Once Serena Effingham started, as a single word, possibly a name, reached her listening ear from the dim chamber. Was it a name she heard? If so, whose name? For an instant she was half inclined to fancy that her tense anxiety had produced some passing delusion. Yet, had she been put upon her oath, she would have been forced to confess that the name which had reached her was that of one dead—the name of Paula!

The fancy appeared preposterous; she had no intention of betraying such a piece of sensationalism to her son, while Hubert Effingham had no opportunity of inquiring into the cause of her sudden emotion, since at the moment Morton quitted the bedside and came quickly forth to join them.

"Her swoon is yielding," he said, in answer to the eloquent appeal of their eyes.

"Thank God!"

"Yes, she had passed beyond the portals of death, but she has returned." He spoke according to his present conviction, not as the scientist he prided himself upon being. "She will shortly be conscious," he added, cutting short their eager queries; "her mind will be in an acutely sensitive condition, and, absolute quiet throughout the house is indispensable. I will watch till midnight when, if her condition is favorable, I will relinquish my place to you." He glanced at Serena Effingham. "I would advise you to secure what rest you can during the intervening hours."

He turned to re-enter the chamber, when the lady laid a detaining hand upon his arm.

"Loyd," she whispered, "tell me one thing. What do you consider the cause of this awful trance?"

"Her heart," he answered.

"Then she may die as her father died?"

"It does not follow. She may never have a recurrence of the trouble. What I fear is—"

"What do you fear?"

The sensitive lines of his face seemed to petrify as with a desperate resolution he replied:

"I fear her mind may be affected by this attack."

"Her mind! Oh, Loyd, tell me anything but that!"

"Would you prefer her death?" he demanded, almost harshly.

"Oh, no, no, no!"

"Then let us hope for the best; or at least make the best of the inevitable. You may take comfort in the fact that I promise you Romaine's life."

He turned abruptly as he spoke, and entering the chamber, silently but securely closed the door.

Then it was that the mother's fortitude gave way, and turning to her son, she flung herself upon his breast and burst into tears.

"Oh, Hubert," she sobbed, "what dreadful spell is upon us? After all these years—though I have known Loyd from his infancy, have loved him almost as one of my own children, to-night he seems a stranger to me! What does it mean? what does it all portend?"

He strove to soothe her with loving words, and almost bearing her precious weight in his arms, he led her away to her own apartments.

And then, in expressive silence, the night wore on to its mid-watch. The pale crescent of the moon dropped behind the hills, while here and there a lonesome star peered forth in the rifts of the scudding wrack.

At last, and just upon the stroke of midnight, the vigil was disturbed by the sound of wheels, of footsteps, of voices, and by the muffled unclosing and closing of doors. Loyd Morton started from his chair at the bedside of the sleeping girl. He was pallid to the lips, and with difficulty commanded the desperate condition of his nerves. Contrary to his commands, the door of the chamber had been opened to admit the stalwart figure of a man. The pair had not met in many a year, but in the dim radiance of the shaded lamp, their recognition was instantaneous.

For an instant Morton quailed. The intruder who had braved his authority, to which even the anxiety of a mother deferred, was Colston Drummond!

The confrontation bristled with omen.

CHAPTER IV.

"I do not know what witchcraft's in him."

Had he been put upon the rack Loyd Morton would still have been unable to give any coherent account of his vigil at the bedside of Romaine Effingham. Four hours had elapsed from the moment that he closed the chamber-door until, upon the stroke of midnight, it opened to admit Colston Drummond. Reflection failed to assist him to any satisfactory explanation regarding the flight of the time. He was morally certain that he had not lost an instant in slumber, the tension upon his mind would be almost proof positive that he could not have lapsed into unconsciousness; and yet the span seemed a complete void as he looked back upon it.

Romaine still lived; indeed her hold upon vitality had visibly strengthened since Morton's advent, yet, so far as his cognizance of the phenomenon went, Nature unassisted had taken the resurrection into her own hands. Resurrection was Morton's estimate of the miracle, since every token of immediate dissolution was present in the appearance of his patient when first he bent over her. The eyes were glazed, the flesh clammy, and the pulsations imperceptible. The extremities were cold with that peculiar chill which is so eloquent to the practised touch. Death's conquest was imminent, perhaps assured, and he had done nothing to avert the dread consummation—nothing save to murmur the name of one which embodied, for him, the quintessence of existence here and hereafter.

"Paula!" he had murmured, half tentatively, half mechanically.

It must have been the result of sorcery if simply at the utterance of that name Death furled his pale flag and left the field to his erstwhile routed opponent. Yet such was the case, as the physician's keen senses promptly detected. The young man experienced a thrill second to none that as yet he had encountered in his professional career, as upon his finger-tips came the delicate flutter of the pulse, while to his eager sight followed a gentle upheaval of the breast that sent a quivering sigh to his listening ear.

It was a supreme moment to Loyd Morton.

Naturally his first impulse was to apply some restorative and thus assist resuscitation. There was brandy at hand, a small quantity of which he inserted, drop by drop, between the parted lips. The effect produced seemed magical; the respiration became steady, a delicate glow crept into the wan cheeks, while a genial warmth attended by that most encouraging of symptoms, a dew-like moisture, relaxed the cold rigidity of the hands that returned the faintest possible pressure as they rested in the young doctor's clasp. Every token of convalescence by degrees made itself manifest and progressed until the soft gray eyes unclosed, instinct with crescent intelligence.

The watcher bent eagerly so that his countenance should fill the field of her vision, so that her awakening consciousness should grasp his personality to the exclusion of all other objects. Apparently the unpremeditated act met with flattering success, in that Romaine Effingham's first utterance framed his name.

"Loyd!"

It was simply an articulate breath, but it was a conscious utterance capable of interpretation, and Morton was satisfied; nay, he was enraptured.

"Paula!" he exclaimed, in his exaltation, "Paula, you have come back to me!"

"I have—come back," was the tremulous reply.

"And we shall never, never again be parted," he urged with passionate intensity.

The dilated eyes watched him as if spell-bound.

"You understand that you are no longer Romaine, but Paula, my own dear, true love," he continued, giving each word its due import; "Romaine has gone to her rest, but you have returned to make my life once more worth the living! Oh, my dear one, tell me that you realize the situation, that you comprehend my words! Let me hear you say that you are Paula, my wife."

"Paula, your wife," came the obedient echo.

Had he been in his normal condition of self-control, Morton's exuberant satisfaction might have been tempered by a consciousness of the fact that he was forcing his own volition upon a cataleptic subject; the strained circumstances under which he labored, however, spared him this somewhat matter-of-fact view of the case. Indeed, he had closed all avenues of approach to unwelcome spectres of the scientific order, for the time being at least. Moreover, he had permitted himself to lose sight of an attribute which upon more than one occasion had been imputed to him. It had been whispered among his hyper-sensitive patients that the young physician possessed that most mysterious, yet positive, of gifts, mesmeric power, animal magnetism,—what you will. Be that as it may, Loyd Morton undoubtedly exerted a strong attraction for those in whom he was personally interested. Babblers had informed him of his endowment much, be it said, to his annoyance; but the fact remained that he held his fellow man in thrall, whether he would or not.

Either of the above considerations would have tinctured his overflowing cup with bitterness; but as he had already drained that cup of joy, it remained for digestion to prove whether the adverse mixture had crept in in some ingustable form.

A few more words of passionate admonition he addressed to his patient ere the eye-lids drooped and the breathing became measured as in that profound slumber which succeeds exhaustion.

And thereupon began that extraordinary vigil, during which Morton was conscious of naught save the assured resurrection and possible—he dared not think probable—reincarnation.

She had placed her hand in his ere she fell asleep, and he sat close beside her scarcely venturing to relinquish it into the keeping of its fellow where it rested upon her breast. By the light of the shaded lamp he studied the calm beauty of the girl's features, the restful slumber lending a heightening touch to their exquisite outline.

Always a being set above and apart from his anxious existence, he had seen even less than formerly of Romaine since his marriage, and in that time she had matured into the perfection of womanhood. He had loved her, as he had loved the other members of her family, with a love born of gratitude. There had been no sentiment in this love beyond that of grateful appreciation; he had loved Romaine exactly in the vein that he had loved her brothers; had he been called upon, he would have laid down his life for any of them with undiscriminating loyalty. Having been his intimate friend, Malcolm might have stood first in a test of self-sacrifice, but there had never been the slightest shade of difference in his sense of allegiance to either Hubert or Romaine. In a word, he had never loved Romaine otherwise than as a friend; within the niche before which his soul bowed down in all-absorbing idolatry he had set up the image of the woman who had been his wife, and as it was a case of soul-worship with him, the niche remained occupied to the eternal exclusion of rival effigies.

He recalled with a flutter of timid pride how officious friends, ambitious of his welfare, had ventured to couple his name with that of Romaine.

"You were her brother's 'Fidus Achates,'" they urged; "you have received not only marks of affection from every member of her family, but positive encouragement in every form. Take Malcolm's vacant place and be a son and brother and husband all in one."

To this friendly folly he smiled in answer, saying, "You admit that I assumed the rÔle of Achates to perfection, do you?"

"Certainly!" was the reply.

"Then let me rest upon my laurels. I am wise in my own generation. I know the limit of my histrionic ability and have no wish to attempt an impersonation of Phaethon."

Hence his friends inferred that he was disinclined to court Romaine Effingham through modesty or diffidence, little dreaming that he refused to enter the lists through lack of inclination. Even upon this night as he sat at her bed-side, keeping vigil while she slept, satisfied that she was convalescent, he was simply grateful that heaven in its mercy had spared her to her mother and brother, and—

A cold perspiration akin to the dews of death, pearled upon his brow, grown suddenly pallid, as a problem of dire import flitted like a grewsome spectre into the field of his speculation.

"If," suggested the phantom, with appalling reason, "she is spared to her mother and brother, is she not spared as well to her affianced lover? Will he not shortly claim her as his own? And if, as you have been persuaded to believe, her soul is at rest while the soul of one you have loved and lost is renascent, incarnate in her body, how will you bear this second separation, this alienation in life, which promises to be infinitely more trying than that of death?"

He sat as one spell-bound, listening in horror to the silent voice.

He relaxed his hold upon the girl's hand and it fell limply at her side. His eyes grew haggard with the speechless agony of uncertainty, while his pallid lips strove to utter the cry of his anguished soul, "My God, why did I not foresee this emergency? Thou art my judge that I would not cause her one instant's misery, would not cast my shadow in the path of her perfect happiness for my life, and yet"—"And yet," resumed the voice of the phantom—alas, with no intonation of mockery—"and yet you must secure her body in order to claim communion with the soul that now animates it. Look upon her, strive to realize that this is Paula your wife and no longer the daughter of your benefactors."

"Oh, grant me some proof!" he moaned; "Paula! Paula, speak to me! In heaven's name, give me the satisfaction of knowing that you are with me once again, or this uncertainty will drive me mad!" He had dropped upon his knees at the bedside and had almost roughly resumed possession of her hand, passionately pressing it to his lips. "Paula," he cried, "assure me that you are here, grant me some token that you recognize me, Loyd, your husband, and help me to shape my course of action, for now is the appointed time; one precious moment lost and we may be estranged, hopelessly parted. I am groping in darkness like unto the shadow of death. If ever I needed thy guiding hand, I need it now, in this supreme, this awful moment. Oh, hear me, Paula! I conjure you, speak to me!"

As if in answer to his desperate exhortation, she stirred in her sleep, and he felt the soft flutter of her hand as it lay crushed between his.

"No, no!" he panted, "you must speak, or I shall not be satisfied that it is indeed you! Call me Loyd, husband—anything you will, so that I recognize your presence?"

He arose and bent low above her, almost crying aloud in exultation as her lips parted to exhale his name, simply his name.

"Loyd!"

Then the profound slumber resumed its sway.

He raised the quiescent figure in his arms and imprinted a passionate kiss upon the low brow.

"Did you not promise me," he whispered, "that before the dawn of another day I should take a living body in my arms and know that it is animated by your soul? Your prophecy has come true and I thank God for it!"

Very gently he lowered the delicate form among the pillows and with a reverent touch placed the hand that he had caressed, within the clasp of its fellow; then he turned and began to pace the shadowy chamber in a state of uncontrollable excitement.

"She warned me," he murmured, "that consequences would arise over which she should have no control; warned me that I should have to confront them. I assured her that I was not only ready, but eager to accept the chances. What was my conviction at that moment compared with the overwhelming conviction that commands me now? Then she was intangible, invisible even,—a spirit; now she is in the flesh and has addressed me with lips of flesh! Be the consequences what they may, this body which has served her soul with the means of reincarnation shall belong to me, as wholly and entirely as her soul, which is mine to all eternity!"

"You do not love that body," whispered the spectral Mentor; "beautiful as in itself it is, it possesses no attraction for you."

"By degrees I shall learn to cherish it," was the undaunted reply; "shortly I shall love it as being her abode."

Argument was out of the question in his existing condition of mental exultation; not that he had quite lost his grip upon himself, since some semblance of common-sense had borne ecstatic fancy company in her flight to the lofty pinnacle upon which she now poised, as his next more material thought gives evidence. He had reached the fire-place in his nervous perambulation and had paused upon the hearth, mechanically setting his gaze upon the smouldering embers.

"I would to heaven," he muttered, "that Paula's spirit had returned to me in any other guise than this! I shudder before the complication that looms upon the near horizon, and yet in what am I to be blamed for what of necessity must transpire in the immediate future? How can I be expected, in the very nature of things, to be able to explain to Drummond the reason that he should cease to cherish his love and relinquish all to me? Would he not consider me hopelessly insane were I to lay before him the reason for my determined action, expose a scheme which even in my eyes seems unparalleled in the history of man? No, no! I am convinced that so occult a compact must remain an inviolable secret between the Infinite and me. I feel myself to be but a mere factor in some great covenant, an instrument, a simple means tending towards an end of which I am in ignorance."

The smouldering embers fell together upon the hearth, emitting one expiring lance of flame, illumining his pallid features grown tense and rigid with resolution.

"I may be forced to dissimulation, even to deceit," he concluded, turning away from the dazzling gleam, "in order to effect my purpose. Already, as it were unconsciously, have I prepared Mrs. Effingham for possible catastrophes. I have told her that her daughter will recover, but in the same breath I warned her that I feared for her mental condition. Why I so warned her, heaven only knows. So far as I know at present that utterance was a lie, a base, ignoble fabrication; but it came unbidden to my lips, and who shall say that it came not at the instigation of some mysterious power beyond and above me? Who shall deny that, since I have ceased to be the man I was, some species of clairvoyant skill has descended upon me as the natural concomitant of the atmosphere of unreality that henceforth I shall breathe?"

He turned quickly and crept to the bedside, a desperate expression kindling in his haggard eyes as they rested upon the sleeping girl.

"Whether the issue proves me to be clairvoyant or brands me with falsehood, I must establish mental aberration in my patient, or lose my prize," he muttered; "I have burned my bridges and there is no retreating now!"

Scarcely had the incoherent words escaped his lips ere a clock tolled midnight and simultaneously the sound of wheels upon the terrace disturbed the peaceful course of night.

Thereupon followed the confusion of the muffled unclosing and closing of doors, excited voices and hurrying footsteps.

The sleeper stirred and moaned. Morton drew himself up into an attitude of unconscious defence, vaguely preparing himself for menace or attack, and in the next instant the door was thrust open to admit Colston Drummond.

No need to glance twice at the handsome face in order to guess the ungovernable anxiety and disarray that possessed the young lover.

"Is she alive?" he gasped, advancing into the middle of the chamber.

For answer, Morton imperiously waved him back in silence.

"No, no!" he cried, "give me some satisfaction! Tell me at least that I have not arrived too late! In God's name, why do you not speak?"

Barring his impetuous passage to the bedside, even laying detaining hands upon Drummond's shoulders, Morton was about to reply, when a low cry disturbed the ominous pause.

Snatched from her profound slumber and unobserved, Romaine Effingham had struggled up to a sitting posture and straightway fallen back with the cry which had startled the silence.

"Oh, why will you torture me?" she moaned piteously, flinging her arms across her face as if in desperate effort to shut out the sight of some uncanny apparition; "take him—take him away and let me—rest! In mercy, let me rest!"

"Romaine! Great heaven! what does this mean?"

"Silence!" commanded Morton, releasing his hold and retreating a step, while a gleam of triumph flickered for one brief moment in his sunken eyes; "Mr. Drummond, if you have any respect for the life of Miss Effingham, you will instantly leave this room!"

"Her life?" echoed Drummond in suspense, "it appears to me rather as if her reason were in jeopardy!"

"You are right," came the firm response, "her reason is gone—she is mad!"

"She is abused, stolen from me, and corrupted by spells and medicines bought of mountebanks."

"A day in April never came so sweet to show how costly summer was at hand," may be quoted as applicable to the rare dawn that succeeded that night of mystic import at Belvoir. The whole world seemed instinct with the smile of jocund spring. The dreary night had wept itself away, leaving its tears to jewel each new-born blade of grass. High up upon the spacious lawn crocuses fluttered their imperial raiment while snowdrops nodded and shook their bells as the bland wind swept by. The brook, swollen to a ruffled sea that inundated the low-land meadows, swirled through the willow-copse plumed to its crest with golden down in token of its glad revival. The trees stretched forth their yearning arms green with enamel of new buds; and over all the sun, rejoicing in release, shot his bright lances into nook and dell where lurked the mists of yesterday.

Yet, despite the allurements of the outer world, the inmates of Belvoir House remained invisible, and the stately white columns were left to mount guard over their sharply defined shadows along the sunny piazza.

Within the mansion much of the silence and gloom of the preceding night prevailed. Breakfast had been prepared as usual, but the appointed hour had passed unheeded, a significant fact in a household of such rigid regulation. By and by, however, a rustle upon the staircase announced the appearance of Mrs. Effingham.

Meeting a servant upon the way, the lady inquired where she should find Mr. Drummond; the man replied that he was closeted in the library with his young master, Hubert.

Thither she went directly, entering suddenly, and surprising the young gentlemen in the depths of earnest conversation.

"You have seen Romaine?" they inquired simultaneously.

"Yes, I have just left her."

"How is she?"

"Apparently safe."

Thereupon a strained silence ensued, during which Drummond led Mrs. Effingham to a divan and seated himself beside her, while Hubert watched the pair with an intentness that reflected the motive of his interrupted conversation with his future brother-in-law.

Colston Drummond was the first to break the silence.

"How do you find Romaine?" he asked.

The lines of anxious care deepened upon the lady's face as she replied.

"I have said that I consider her perfectly safe."

"Mentally as well as physically?"

"How can I tell? As yet I have seen no signs of derangement in her."

"Ah!" exclaimed Drummond, eagerly, "then you refuse to credit his announcement that she is mad!"

"If you mean Loyd, I believe that he has spoken in accordance with his convictions."

"He may be mistaken," was the terse reply.

Serena Effingham glanced in a startled way from one to the other of the young men, and it was Hubert who came to her relief.

"Colley has been urging the necessity of calling in another physician," he explained. "But I tell him, mother, that we have reason to have implicit faith in Loyd's ability; besides, it would seem like insult to send for any one now that she is out of danger."

Drummond passed his hand over his curling hair with a gesture eloquent of impatient doubt.

"Of course, I will not interfere if you are satisfied," he said. "But I beg you to answer me one question, for I feel that I shall never sleep, nor rest in peace until it is answered."

"What is it, my dear boy?" inquired Mrs. Effingham.

"You will grant me that Romaine is my affianced wife?" he demanded.

"No one disputes that point."

"And she loves me with her whole heart and soul? No, you need not answer that question! Here upon my heart lies her last letter, written within the month. I want no better evidence that she is mine, as truly as woman was ever man's."

"Well? What more do you ask?"

"What more?" he cried excitedly. "I ask why she screamed at sight of me last night, crying piteously, 'Why will you torture me? Take him away and let me rest!' Can you explain such words upon her lips, and at sight of me?"

"She was not herself, Colston. Her attitude towards you is proof that her mind is indeed deranged."

He shook his head dejectedly.

"You have just told me that as yet you have seen no signs of derangement in her," he said. "Tell me, if you can, why she should seem insane to me, yet sane to you?"

At this juncture Serena Effingham turned to Drummond and flung her arms about his neck.

"My darling boy," she murmured, gently; "for you are that, and ever will be to me. You are worn out with fatigue and excitement. The shock of finding Romaine so ill, after your long and hopeful journey, has completely unhinged you. But I sympathize with you. Remember, that my love for her is akin to yours, and remember, too, that God is good; and I believe that, if we pray unceasingly, He in His mercy will give her back to us, sane and whole again."

He stooped and kissed her up-turned forehead, as he replied,

"God bless you, dear mother. I would that my faith were such as yours!"

Then, releasing himself from the lady's embrace, he rose, adding,

"I am going to breakfast with my mother at Drummond Lodge. Meanwhile, watch Romaine! I shall return later in the day and shall depend upon an interview with her."

"Which I may almost promise shall be granted you."

The voice that uttered these unexpected words was low of pitch yet startlingly sonorous; indeed, so unprepared were the trio for the sudden intrusion, that they were quite thrown off their guard, and turned about in some disarray.

Doctor Loyd Morton proved to be the intruder. He stood upon the threshold of the apartment, parting the drapery with one outstretched hand, while the extreme pallor of his countenance, the firmness of his glance, as well as his pronounced dignity of mien, failed not to impress his beholders.

Divining that the situation threatened to become strained, Mrs. Effingham remarked quickly,

"We have been waiting for you to breakfast with us, Loyd." Then turning to Drummond, she added, "We shall look for you at dinner, Colston. Always bear in mind that you are at home at Belvoir."

Drummond bowed in silence, and with one glance at Morton, who had advanced a step, still holding the drapery, he passed into the hall, accompanied by Hubert.

The moment the drapery fell into place again, Serena Effingham advanced impulsively and kissed Morton with the maternal fervor which had ever been her wont with him.

"What a debt we owe you, Loyd, dear," she murmured beneath her breath, while her eyes lingered upon the swaying folds that hid Drummond from her view.

"Address your thanks to God," he replied, steadily, holding her in his arms.

"You have saved her life!"

"Say rather that He has spared her."

"She would have died had you not come to us."

The firmness of his glance never wavered for an instant as he answered,

"That is true; but we must bear in mind that I am but an instrument in the hands of the Almighty."

And his words were uttered with as sincere a conviction as had ever possessed him. However deeply he may have been impressed by the questionable part he was enacting, he was satisfied that Romaine Effingham would have been laid beside her father and brother in the tomb but for his influence, at the moment of the crisis. Through his interposition, he told himself, her body had been saved; with the fate that had befallen her soul he was not concerned. In a series of gyrations, never-ending in their recurrence, the words seemed to dance through his brain, "A body is theirs, a soul is mine; a soul is mine, a body is theirs," and so on, and on, and on, with incessant swirl and swing until, dazed and confused, he was forced to seek the palliative of fresh air under pretence of making a hasty round of visits upon his patients.

Meanwhile, above stairs in her dainty chamber, Romaine had been clothed in a robe of delicate texture, snowy as the billowy rifts of swan's-down that strayed about the neck and down the front, and had been placed in the azure depths of silken cushions upon a lounge that stood where the flood of genial sunshine streamed in. Beside her a huge cluster of mingled Freesia and golden jonquils spent their rich fragrance upon the air, conjuring, as it were, a hint of the exuberant spring-tide within the house. A very festival of warmth and light seemed to hold the chamber beneath its inspiring spell, calling forth ethereal tones in the blues of the rugs and hangings, and investing the silver upon the toilet-table with a quite magical glitter.

A little maid, meek-eyed as any dove, went here and there with noiseless step, putting the finishing touches to the final arrangement of the room. Now and again she would cast a dutiful glance towards the couch whereon lay her fair young mistress, with eye-lids drooping until the dark lashes rested upon her pale cheeks, her slender fingers interlaced upon her breast.

There were sparrows chirping somewhere about the casements, while from the distance the hum of pastoral life came drowsily to the ear.

The little maid fluttered her plumed brush about a Dresden cavalier, ruthlessly smothering a kiss that he had been vainly endeavoring for years to blow from the tips of his effeminate fingers to a mincing shepherdess, beyond the clock upon the mantle. In due time she relieved the love-lorn knight and fell upon his inamorata, favoring her with the same unceremonious treatment. The clock chimed twelve to the accompaniment of a brief waltz, presumably executed upon the lute of the china goat-herd that surmounted the time-piece, and at the same moment Romaine Effingham stirred. In an instant the faithful watcher was beside the couch.

"Miss Romaine!" she breathed, "it is I, Joan. Can I do anything for Miss Romaine?"

One of the slender hands was raised and rested lightly upon the little maid's head.

"Yes," was the low reply. "You may find him and send him to me."

"Who, Miss Romaine? Mr. Hubert?"

"No."

"Mr. Drummond?"

"No, no," emphatically, but not impatiently.

"Ah! I know—Doctor Morton?"

"Oh, yes!" with a sigh. "Loyd; go and find him."

"Yes, Miss Romaine."

But instead of Loyd Morton it was Serena Effingham who had hastened promptly to her daughter's side.

"Here I am, dear," she said, stooping to caress the fair low brow. "I have been besieged by callers to inquire for you, but from this moment I will deny myself to everyone until you are quite strong and well again."

"But I sent for Loyd," persisted the girl, in the same calm tone.

"Loyd has gone to visit his patients, my darling; but you may depend upon it he will not be gone long."

"I hope not. O, how devoted he is! Why, it is to him that I owe my life, for he has brought me back to life; and yet—and yet how strange it seems that I cannot recollect where I have been in all this time!"

"Dearest child, do not distress yourself," urged the mother anxiously; "you will recall everything in time and all will be well."

"Ah, but it is not distress to me! It was like a dream of heaven when I heard his voice calling me to come out of the shadow into the radiance that his dear face shed about me! Oh, there can be no death where he is, and no sorrow while he is by!"

She smiled as one smiles in sleep, and let her eye-lids droop until the lashes cast their shadow.

Each of the strange words deepened the pallor upon Serena Effingham's face, a sign of anxious care, perhaps not wholly due to her consciousness of the fact that her daughter was actually under the spell of a gentle hallucination; as a matter of fact it pained her that that hallucination had taken a course somewhat at variance with Drummond's interests.

As she had determined, from that moment she devoted herself to Romaine. The greater part of the time the girl slept soundly; during the intervals of wakefulness she seemed happy and at perfect peace within herself. Occasionally she would break her complacent silence by inquiries for Morton; otherwise she appeared inclined to enter into no sort of converse.

Such nourishment as was offered her she accepted with relish, remarking once, with a fleeting smile, "I have seen enough of death for one lifetime; and I want to live, since I have so much to live for."

Plainly her volition materially assisted her convalescence, which was rapid—visible almost from hour to hour. And thus the uneventful afternoon waned to early evening. The goat-herd rehearsed his brief waltz over and over again, and the sun went westward, withdrawing his rays from the silken hangings and the silver upon the toilet-table.

Lacking in incident as the day had proved at Belvoir, to Loyd Morton it had been an epoch of emotions such as he had never dreamed of realizing.

Upon leaving Belvoir, he had gone directly to his house in town, into which he admitted himself with a latch-key. The object of his haste was to place himself before a portrait of his wife which hung in a room held sacred to her memory. Here, amid a thousand mementos of the happy past, it was his custom to sit during his leisure hours, brooding upon the wreck that had overtaken him.

To-day, however, he entered the mortuary apartment with buoyant step, wafting a smiling kiss up at the fair-haired Gretchen that gazed upon him from her frame above the mantel-piece. He flung wide the windows and blinds, even sweeping back the draperies, that the April sun might beam in and rob the place of shadow.

Then he placed himself before the portrait, and thus addressed it, giving vent to his pent-up exaltation,

"I no longer beseech you to speak to me with those beloved lips," he cried, "nor to smile upon me with those eyes that heaven has tinted with its own blue! And yet I must adore your image, which, after all, is lost to me. But what care I, since your immortal soul actuates other lips to breathe your love for me, and kindles other eyes with that same deathless love when silence falls between us? O, Paula, my idol! tell me why I should be so infinitely blessed, when other men languish in their bereavement? Thou knowest now that I am as other men are—as full of frailty and sin as any; then, why am I favored with the lot of angels? O my God, it cannot be that I have died and this is heaven!—this being with you and yet not seeing you, this exquisite aggravation which is mingled agony and bliss! By some strange decree, you are with me again, yet I cannot see, I cannot touch, you. Am I perhaps in purgatory? Or, worse, what if I should wake to find myself in a Fool's Paradise! Heaven forbid; for that would drive me mad, and then my unbalanced spirit would wander gibbering through all eternity, and know you not! Oh, no, no, no! It is the magic of our great love that has united us in this communion, which ameliorates the misery of our transient separation, and I thank God for it! Another day, and mayhap I shall be with you indeed—in the spirit, in heaven! But, oh, my love, my life, my all in all, my divinity, never desert me! In mercy and in love remain with me until the hour of my release; then lead me back with thee!"

Thus more or less coherently he rambled on before the gazing portrait, in wild salutation and petition, until the sudden opening of the door hurled him from the heights of exaltation to earth.

Upon the threshold stood his man, amazed and at the same time abashed.

"You will excuse me, sir," he began brokenly; "but I had no idea you were in the house. I heard voices up here, and I thought thieves had got in, or—or that the place was haunted!"

"I suppose I have the right to come and go and speak in my own house as I choose?" retorted Morton testily, conscious of his inexplicable demeanor, and impotently furious accordingly. "Close the blinds and windows, and shut the room up. Have there been any calls?"

"No end of them, sir—and letters."

Glad to make his escape from a predicament that bordered too closely upon the ridiculous to be comfortable, Morton hastily descended to his office. In the ante-chamber, in which he had received Hubert Effingham on the preceding evening, he found ample affirmation of his man's statement that he had been sought during his absence. The slate was covered with names and requests, while upon a table lay a salver heaped with letters. These he mechanically examined until, at the very bottom of the heap, he came upon a missive which promptly arrested his attention. It was addressed in pencil and unsealed. A moment later and he had possessed himself of the startling information contained within.

He rang the bell in haste and excitedly anticipated the advent of his man by throwing open the door into the hall.

"When was this note left?" he demanded.

"Last evening, sir."

"At what hour?"

"Just before you left the house, sir, with Mr. Effingham."

"Before I left the house!" exclaimed Morton; "in heaven's name, why did you not bring it to me? It is a case of life and death! It should have been attended to without the loss of a moment. As I could not attend to it myself, I should have sent Chalmers in my place."

The poor man looked panic-stricken.

"You will excuse me, sir," he faltered, "but I knocked twice on the study-door while the messenger waited, but I got no response. I thought you couldn't come, so sent the messenger away."

"But why did you not give me the note before I went away with Mr. Effingham?"

"Well, the truth is, sir," stammered the man, "I had no idea you were going to leave during office-hours, so I just slipped down to finish a cup o' tea, and when I came up you were off and away."

"Fool! Do you know that your negligence may have cost Miss Casson her life?"

"Casson!" gasped the man, turning pale to the lips and staggering against the wall for support, "the Lord save us, sir; she's dead!"

"Dead!" echoed Morton, in horror.

"Dead, sir! They sent round word early this morning to say that she died at midnight sharp."

Morton staggered into his study, slamming the door in the man's face. He threw himself into the deep reclining-chair which Margaret Revaleon had occupied, and pressed his head between his hands in a desperate endeavor to collect his wits.

Hark! was it a repeating voice, or some mad phantasy, the coinage of his excited brain, that reproduced those thrilling words:

"You will be called to attend a dying woman,—you are called, already is the messenger here. A woman's soul is trembling upon the threshold of eternity. If you are alone with her when that soul takes wing, my spirit will instantly take its place—and your skill will do the rest. Accomplish the resurrection of that body and secure our further communion."

Two women were approaching the threshold of death and two messengers were waiting to summon him while those portentous words were being uttered! To which of the two should he have gone? Which one was intended, destined for the promised reincarnation?

CHAPTER VI.

Morton roused from his passing stupor to find himself in a highly hysterical condition. He was inclined to laugh; in fact he did laugh in a mirthless way, with sobbing accent that closely resembled the act of weeping. He strove to assure himself that he had been the dupe of his own over-taxed nerves; that his present condition was wholly due to the excessive tension of his mental powers and want of sleep. He even went so far as to smilingly pledge his presumptive happiness in a copious dose of valerian. Thus armed with a species of Dutch courage, he threw himself upon a lounge and sought composure. If his wife's spirit, he reasoned, were omnipresent in all conditions and under all circumstances that pertained to him, as had been represented, and if that spirit were anxious to be reincarnate, as he had been given to understand that it was, why in the name of all that was rational, should it desert him, simply because he hastened to attend one dying woman instead of another? What possible difference could it make which corporeal attire it assumed? was it not reasonable to assume that a spirit, presumably clairvoyant, would pursue its affinity as the magnet seeks the pole, and appropriate any earthly guise, since the power was granted it? Was not Romaine Effingham's body as well fitted for its reinstatement in the flesh as another's?

True, the late Miss Casson had possessed a certain fascination for him, which had been commented upon before he went abroad to meet his fate, and naturally enough his wife had divined the ci-devant but now defunct spell when she took her place in his circle, and, woman-like, had rallied him upon it.

"If I had come to you bare-footed," she often remarked jocosely, "I should not be constantly haunted by the consciousness that the fair Isabel is impatiently awaiting my shoes."

To which quip he invariably replied with a laugh, "Such a suspicion would never occur to you, my dear, if the shoes did not pinch."

And upon this occasion he conjectured, with a drowsy smile, that Isabel Casson's body would have failed to offer his wife's spirit the inducements to reincarnation that Romaine's might, under the circumstances, the beautiful Miss Effingham having been ever far removed from any such lovers' banter. And so, thanks to the drug and his own reasoning power, he lapsed involuntarily into sleep, the result of excessive fatigue. When at last he awoke, he sprang to his feet, startled at his own temerity. His hysteria had vanished, leaving him depressed and apathetic. With a thrill he noticed that the sun, obscured by the windy clouds of the early spring evening, had crept round to the back of the house and was glimmering fitfully in at his study windows. The day had waned, and heaven only knew how many precious hours he had lost.

He paused a moment, his blood halting in his veins as he strove to surmise what might have transpired at Belvoir during his absence. Fortunately for him, he had not overheard Drummond's half-implied doubts of the morning, but in guilty consciousness of his attitude towards Romaine's affianced lover, he instinctively felt the young gentleman to be, in all righteousness, his deadly antagonist.

Ten minutes later he had ordered his carriage and was being borne swiftly over the road that led to Belvoir, the invigorating breath of the April evening blowing in upon him and soothing his perturbation, despite himself. Consequently, as he passed through the gateway of Belvoir, that gave back that description of echo peculiar to aristocratic portals and cemeteries, he drew a long breath, feeling himself to be himself again. Even the apparition of a well-known, stalwart figure crossing the lawn from the direction of Drummond Lodge, failed to materially disturb his equilibrium, since he had already alighted before the figure had reached the garden stair leading up to the terrace.

He let himself in at the unbarred door, as he had been wont to do in the old time when he had been more an inmate of, than visitor at, the house, and, finding no one to delay or question him in the shadowy hall, he mounted the stairs, and laid his hand upon the door of his patient's chamber.

He entered noiselessly, even pausing and holding his breath in amazement at the vision that met his gaze.

Left alone for the moment, Romaine had arisen from her couch and had gone to one of the windows that afforded an enchanting prospect of the eastern hills, cloaked in the emerald film of bourgeoning spring, vivified by the effulgence of the setting sun. She stood with the silken drapery thrust back in her upraised hand, thus admitting the evening glow that lent a touch etherial to her lovely face and flowing attire.

It seemed like the irony of Fate that Morton should have discovered her thus, instead of Drummond; but, even with his normal faculty of observation, Morton paused, spell-bound. He neither spoke, nor made the slightest movement that might disturb her intent revery. He simply put the passionate yearning of his heart into one brief and mute appeal.

"Oh, my darling, my Paula, my wife! Come to me of your own accord. Come to me and let me feel the clasp of your dear arms about my neck!"

Whether she experienced the strong mesmeric power of that dumb appeal, or whether her woman's instinct only warned her of his silent presence, is a question for the determination of graduates in the science of psychology. Certain it is that she turned with a visible thrill, and came to him, the loose drapery of her sleeves falling back and exposing the exquisite symmetry of her outstretched arms. She laid those arms about his neck, glancing up into his face with a smile, and kissed him upon the lips.

"How I have longed for you!" she murmured; "and what an eternity since you left me!"

"Paula—Paula, my own sweet love!" he ventured breathlessly.

He stared hungrily into her upturned face, half-fearfully, half-confidently noting the effect of his words; but the calm smile remained unchanged, fixed upon her features as might have been the smile of peaceful death, save that it wore the tint of life. He caught her in his arms, passionately folding her to his breast, kissing her hair, her brow, and lips.

In the next moment his quick ear detected the sound of foot-falls upon the neighboring staircase.

"He is coming!" he whispered in involuntary alarm. "I promised him that he should see you; but, oh, my love, remember that it is I, not he, who claim you now—claim your every thought, your love wholly and entirely!"

"I shall not forget that which is a part of my own being," she answered gently. "With you by my side, I should not fear to face Satan himself!"

He bore her in his arms to the lounge and tenderly placed her upon it.

"I am your physician, as well as lover," he murmured; "and it is in my power to prevent your being tortured by a lengthy interview."

She smiled up at him reassuringly.

"Have no fear for me," she said. "But—but do not leave me."

And, upon the instant, Colston Drummond entered the chamber.

Morton stood at the head of the couch, his body half-turned away, his face studiously averted; yet, in spite of his attitude, he was conscious that Romaine's lover had thrown himself upon his knees beside her couch, and had possessed himself of one of her hands, which he pressed passionately to his lips.

"Romaine, Romaine," he faltered in evident suspense, "why do you turn away your head? Why do you hide your face from me? Do you not know me? It is I, Colston; I have come home to claim you for my wife, as we agreed. Have you forgotten? In mercy, try to think, try to recall the happy past! Oh, look at me, Romaine!"

A brief silence succeeded the eager appeal, only to be broken by a sharp gasp from Drummond.

"Great God!" he exclaimed in an accent of horror, "can it be that she does not know me? Dr. Morton, what does this mean?"

He had regained his feet and stepped so close to Morton that his breath fanned his cheek. Morton turned swiftly, and their glances met. Some vague instinct seemed to warn each of them that in a way they were rivals, and for an instant they appeared to be measuring each other's strength, as for some mortal combat—Drummond suffused, as to his handsome face, with suppressed excitement, Morton sternly calm and pallid.

"Pray do not forget, Mr. Drummond," the latter said steadily, "that Miss Effingham is an invalid. As her physician, I insist upon her being undisturbed."

The words, far from recalling Drummond to his senses, seemed to increase his agitation.

"And do not forget, sir," he retorted, "that my attitude towards Miss Effingham entitles me to some satisfaction, some explanation."

Morton simply bowed his head, covertly watching the young gentleman as he crossed the chamber. With his hand upon the door, Drummond paused and turned, whether for the desperate comfort of one more glance, or ultimate word of defiance is doubtful, since at that moment Romaine half rose upon her couch and clasped one of Morton's hands in both her own. The significant act so maddened its beholder that the last vestige of his self-control vanished. Returning swiftly upon his steps, he snatched a letter from his breast and held it quivering before the eyes of the shrinking girl.

"Romaine Effingham," he cried, "look at this letter! Look at it and let the sight of it restore you to your wits, if you have lost them! Do you recognize it? Do you remember how you wrote these lines to me within a month, these lines instinct with your great love, with your intense longing for me to return to you? I am willing to stake my life that more impassioned words were never sent to absent lover. There stands your signature! Do you deny it?"

She covered her face with her hands and moaned.

"You remember, then?" he added triumphantly. "Your mind is not deranged, but bewitched!"

She only moaned, trembling like a broken twig vibrating in the wind.

Then Morton spoke with the same stony calm of voice and feature:

"You have had your say, sir," he said. "I have permitted you to speak out of pity, but I am answerable to Mrs. Effingham for the welfare of her daughter, which is being jeopardized by such a tirade as this which you have seen fit to indulge in. I therefore request you—as her physician, I request you to respect Miss Effingham's condition, and leave the room."

Drummond raised his head and dealt Loyd Morton a glance which smote him to the heart.

"I go," he answered. "I leave her in peace; but as God is judge of us both, I fail to understand why you, who have enjoyed one all-absorbing love, and ought to be faithful to it, can have the heart to force yourself between my only love and me!"

And, with these significant words, he left the chamber.

Loyd Morton shivered as the door closed heavily upon his departing form, and he crept to the window, raised the drapery, and stood staring blindly out upon the darkening landscape.

For the first time since the beginning of his weird experience, the voice of conscience asserted itself, weakening his resolution to the extent of making a partial coward of him.

"God help me!" he mentally ejaculated; "would to heaven that I had foreseen this disastrous complication before I entered into a covenant with death! Far be it from me to interfere with the love and hope of any man. But what can I do now, if, as I believe, it is Paula's soul that has returned to comfort me in my loneliness? How can I give her up to any other man to love and cherish? Were I to betray her thus, outrage her confidence in me, and doom her to a spiritual hell on earth, how could I face her when at last we meet in the life to come? Heaven have mercy upon me and save me! rescue me from this awful doubt that the soul I love is not with me, is not incarnate here; that I am the victim of some Satanic wile that grants me the power to exert an infernal magnetism to the estrangement of fond and loyal hearts! O my God, rather let me die here and now, before I have consummated irreparable wrong!"

The desperate thought ended in a sharp gasp that voiced the surprise and almost superstitious awe which seized upon him as he felt a slender arm coil itself softly about his neck with soothing contact of cool flesh against his feverish cheek.

The gloom had deepened to darkness within the chamber, but in the deep embrasure of the window there lurked a faint after-glow of day, that ultimate flickering of our northern twilight that seems fraught alike with hinted promise and with lingering farewell. There is a witchery about the "sober livery" of that brief hour that lends itself to the imaginative soul and lays a magic spell upon the triteness of existence.

He knew that she had come to him, but for a moment he trembled in uncertainty.

"You are in doubt about me, Loyd?" she faltered, with a perspicacity that was the more startling by reason of her hesitation. "You think it best to relinquish all claim to me?"

"What think you yourself?" he asked in an agony of suspense.

"I am in doubt when you are."

"But when I am firm?"

"Then I feel that death itself cannot part us."

He wound his arms about her, and in return felt her hold upon him tighten with clinging trust; and thus for one supreme moment they stood.

"When you love, I love," she murmured; "when you waver, I waver. I am the slave of a magnetism of which you are the master."

"Hush, hush!" he gasped, assailed even with her arms about him, by the grewsome conviction which but a minute before had impelled him to call upon heaven to end his ill-starred career; "no, no! this is not magnetism! Banish the thought, dear love, and henceforth believe that it is by a special dispensation of Providence that we are once more united, never again to part!"

She nestled closer to him and laid her sweet head upon his breast in eloquent reliance.

"I believe, since you believe," she murmured.

A moment later there sounded a cautious knocking upon the door.

Morton loosened his embrace and crossed the chamber to answer the summons.

"Mr. Drummond begs Doctor Morton to join him immediately in the library upon a matter of importance," announced the servant.

Morton bowed his head in silence.

CHAPTER VII.

The portentous interview in the library was held within closed doors, and at its conclusion the two gentlemen left the house by one of the casement windows of the room that gave upon the terrace. Through the gathered dusk they passed side by side, their blurred shadows tracking them in the faint radiance of the young moon. Side by side they crossed the lawn, bearing down towards the belt of woodland beyond which lay Drummond Lodge—two apparitions, voiceless and black. At last the blackness of the woods embraced them and they vanished.

Not until the dense umbrage of the budding trees was reached was a word exchanged between the ill-assorted pair. It was there, upon the fragrant hem of the grove, that Morton paused, removed his hat and mopped his brow, though the evening was damp and chill.

"I see no occasion for me to go farther," he remarked, a note of nervous irritation in his tone.

"I did not intend to bring you so far," replied Drummond; "but I wished to think of your proposition; to think before I gave an answer to your—your unnatural demand."

His companion listened to the words, his pallid face agleam in the wan twilight.

"Well," he muttered, "you have arrived at some conclusion?"

"I admit that I am curious to know the limit of your powers," was the reply, bitter with irony.

"I boast no special powers. I will simply try to do that which I have proposed."

Drummond broke off a spray of dogwood blossom and tossed it away unheeded.

"You understand," he said sternly, "understand thoroughly, that I insist upon complete satisfaction in the matter."

"I understand."

"That I must have the proof and testimony which I have named."

"I understand."

"You speak confidently."

"I speak as I feel—as I have reason to speak."

"As you think you have reason to speak," echoed Drummond, an ominous gloom shadowing his fierce eyes. "Well, sir, do your best—accomplish what you can—then come to me at any hour of the night. You may suit your own convenience. Between this hour and daybreak you will find a light burning which will guide you straight to me. You will find me alone and waiting—but, mark you! if you come to me with any trickery, any fabrication, any counterfeit proof, I shall detect you in your infamy, and shall be merciless; so beware! Likewise should you attempt to evade me in the humiliation of failure, I warn you that I shall be equally relentless."

Morton replied in a tense tone which betrayed the struggle for composure that he was undergoing.

"I do not fear you," he said, "your approbation or displeasure is alike a matter of indifference to me. In any case, though I admit but one to be possible, I shall come to you before daybreak."

Drummond drew up his stalwart figure to its full height and folded his arms.

"Under the circumstances, then," he observed with a sneer, "I should be unreasonable were I to encroach upon another instant of your precious time."

Perhaps his mockery was unheeded. Be that as it may, Morton had turned abruptly while he was speaking, and had begun rapidly to retrace his steps to the mansion beyond the lawn.

Upon the fringe of the wood, Colston Drummond stood watching the receding figure until, its lineaments mingling with the pervading gloom, it was lost to sight.

"Charlatan! fool!" he muttered. "I have given you the rope; go hang yourself!"

He turned upon his heel and pressed into the path that led across the copse, through which twinkled the lights of Drummond Lodge.

Suddenly he paused with clenched hands, and only the budding leaves and fronds were auditors of the groan that came, wrung from his inmost soul.

"My God! if she should fail me!"

Meanwhile dinner had been announced at Belvoir. Plenty of candles had been lighted to dispel the gloom. The butler stood at his post before the side-board, but as yet the four chairs placed about the table lacked occupants. The man glanced at the clock upon the mantel-piece and heaved a decorous sigh, doubtless in memory of the well-ordered days of his late master. At last, and just as the hands of the clock marked the half-hour after seven, Hubert Effingham appeared and requested the "faithful Adam" to serve the repast.

"Doctor Morton will dine with us," he said, and turned to meet his mother and Morton as they entered.

Mother and son had indulged in no little surmise as to the sudden disappearance of their two guests, and had delayed dinner until the last moment on their account. Morton's return, unattended, did not serve to elucidate matters, since he did not appear to be in a communicative frame of mind.

The pair had met him upon the terrace, where they had been strolling to and fro in the pale moonlight, talking in lowered tones and awaiting some development in the mystery. They had descried his dark figure as he crossed the lawn, coming from the direction of "Drummond Copse," as the belt of woodland separating the estates was familiarly called, and, with no slight sense of curiosity, awaited his arrival at the head of the steps. Their meeting might have seemed strained, but for Hubert Effingham's remark, which relieved the situation.

"If the dinner is spoiled, my dear Loyd," he said cheerily, "pray do not blame the cook; when guests stray away at the dinner-hour, who is responsible for the consequences? And, by the way, where is Colston? Have we to wait until his constitutional is over?"

"Mr. Drummond will not dine with us this evening," replied Morton, with an indifference, the assumption of which was painfully apparent. "And pardon me; I was in hopes that you would begin, and permit me to catch up with you, as—as I have so frequently done."

"The idea of obliging Loyd to apologize for his actions," interposed Mrs. Effingham, laughing, "when his privileges here are the privileges of his own house! Be off with you, you Hector, and tell Anton he may serve dinner."

Thereupon she linked her arm within that of the young doctor, and glanced up into his face with an affection beyond question.

"Why should I mention your privileges in my home, my dearest boy and almost son?" she asked. "Do I need to remind you of my darling Malcolm's love for you, or of the paternal fondness of that dear one who so soon followed my boy to the grave?"

She noted the nervous tremor of Morton's pallid lips, and hastened to remove the painful impression she had produced.

"Of course not!" she added; "more than ever, now, I account you a son. You have saved Romaine, and it is the debt of a mother's gratitude that I have to repay—if such requital be within human power. Oh, Loyd dear, you are again alone in the world! Come to me and fill the vacant place!"

"Of son?" he demanded in a tone, the hoarseness of which concealed its almost fierce eagerness.

"Of nothing less than son, you know it."

His dark eyes lighted with an inward fire that he was powerless to mask.

"God bless you!—mother," he answered, chokingly; "perhaps the hour is not far distant when I may ask requital for the life I have given you back, and put you to the test."

They had entered the lighted hall and she glanced with a slightly wondering start into his face, though the replied in the same fulness of soul,

"Bring me to the test."

Their entrance into the dining-room and the presence of Hubert put an end to the conversation, and dinner began, a single course of which gave ample proof that the atmosphere had cleared. Romaine was out of danger, indeed convalescent, and the awful suspense of the last twenty-four hours was at an end. Mother and son presided in the very best of spirits, and Morton must have been morose indeed had he been able to withstand the contagion of their buoyant mood. Under the influence of their constantly reiterated gratitude for the feat which they ascribed to his skill, of the genial atmosphere, combined with the excellent fare and wines, he warmed while some hint of hope and peace crept back into his tortured heart. Only once did the clutch of inexorable destiny seem laid upon him, causing his blood to halt in its channels, as Hubert exuberantly exclaimed,

"I see but one way, Loyd, and only one, in which you can be repaid for saving Romaine!"

"Relieve my mind by informing me, Hubert," remarked Mrs. Effingham with a smile; "I confess that I have cudgelled my brains in vain."

"By giving him what he has saved—by giving him Romaine!"

"And how about Colston?" laughed the lady in high good humor.

"I did not take him into the account," responded the young man; "at all events he should not object, under the circumstances."

"Which proves that you have never been in love, my boy."

They glanced at Morton, and were slightly chilled at the sternness of his face and the intensity with which he answered,

"Were it her will, I would gladly be Romaine's servant in love as I have been her servant in life and death."

It was as if a frigid wind had crossed the genial atmosphere, chilling their hearts as the mere passage of a current closes the sensitive blossoms of the deep sea. But the constraint was transient; they were used to Morton's moods, and ever were accustomed to make light of them; and in the kindness of their hearts they readily imagined a score of excuses for this particular one. The actual relief to the situation, however, presented itself in the sudden and unexpected apparition of Romaine herself upon the threshold of the dining-room. She stood between the parted draperies, the soft folds of her robe falling about her in the radiance of the candles.

Romaine's welcome back to her accustomed place at table was full of that exuberant congratulation natural to the situation. There was a general uprising to receive and lead her to the vacant chair, which had been set in place for Colston Drummond. Although Mrs. Effingham and Hubert simultaneously saluted the girl's wan cheeks, Romaine had eyes only for Morton as he bent before her to kiss the hand she involuntarily outstretched to him. Those eyes, so dark and limpid, seemed fairly to embrace the young doctor with their eloquent scrutiny. A conscious flush suffused his face, while an eager, hungry light flashed into his eyes, hitherto so dull and apathetic.

Romaine sank into the vacant chair and glanced about her with a happy sigh.

"How good it seems to be well again!" she exclaimed. "I feel as though I had been away from you all an age. Pray, how long is it since I sat here?"

"Just twenty-four hours, sister mine," replied Hubert.

"One day, only one brief day," she remarked, as it were, introspectively, "and yet in that short space of time I have lived through an eternity—such an eternity!"

Her voice fell almost to a whisper, and her eyes became fixed upon space with an indescribably dreamy inspection in their depths.

Although the dinner was practically at an end, Hubert seated himself beside her, watching her with an affectionate interest not unmixed with sadness. Mrs. Effingham and Morton, however, remained standing side by side at the head of the table, and it was of the latter that the lady inquired in a swift undertone,

"Is it not a risk for her to have left her room so soon?"

"I think not," replied Morton, without removing his eyes from Romaine, upon whom they had rested intently since her appearance; "but I do not approve of her remaining here. See for yourself! The associations of the spot seem to be exerting some spell upon her already. Romaine," he said suddenly, perhaps in answer to the mother's anxious glance, "if I am to be your physician until you are out of all danger, you must obey me. You were imprudent to leave your room without my permission."

She raised her eyes quickly, smiling in happy submission, as she inquired,

"Must I go back again? Command! I am your dutiful patient."

"We will go into the conservatory, if you wish," Morton answered. "It is warmer there and less exposed to draughts; you shall inspect your favorite flowers, and then, I think, we shall have you retire for the night and rest."

She rose with the ready acquiescence of a docile child, and going to him, placed her arm within his.

"Come!" she said. "Of all things, I would like to show you my plants; I think you have not seen them for a long, long time." And with an animated smile, that somehow seemed pathetic, she led Morton away through the glass doors that opened from the dining-room into the spacious conservatory lying fragrant and dim in the rays of the crescent moon.

Hubert had risen as Romaine left the room, and stood with his hand resting upon the back of his chair, lost in troubled thought that mirrored itself upon his expressive face; at last, with sudden resolution, he conquered his painful indecision, and coming to Mrs. Effingham's side, touched her arm.

"Mother," he remarked, "Loyd is correct."

"Loyd is always correct," replied the lady in a startled way, that belied the confidence that her words implied.

"Yes, but he is correct upon one point which you and I, in our great love for Romaine, have been trying to evade during the whole of this endless day."

"What do you mean, Hubert?"

"I mean that Romaine's mind is affected."

"Merciful heaven!" cried the mother, the ready tears glittering in her anxious eyes, "how you utter my thoughts! My dear boy, what shall we do if such be the case?"

"I believe it to be but a temporary aberration, and Loyd thinks so, too," replied the young man, soothingly.

"But how can we tell? O Hubert, what suspense for us!"

"Yes; but we must bear it bravely, mother, hoping and praying for the best. All that we can do is to mind Loyd's commands, in regard to Romaine, to the letter. It must be our duty to see that nothing troubles or thwarts her."

"Of course!"

"Ah, that may mean more than you think."

"How so?"

"It may mean that we shall be forced to forbid Colston the house, or at least the privilege of seeing Romaine until she recovers."

"Colston!" exclaimed Mrs. Effingham, in pained amazement; "forbid Colston Drummond to enter our house!"

"Yes. An unfortunate scene has been enacted this afternoon in Romaine's room between Colston and Loyd—of course in Romaine's presence. Then, later, there has been something mysterious going on between the two men, of what import I do not know."

"What can it be?"

"I say I do not know; but perhaps Loyd will confide in me. In the mean time I have perfect confidence that he is conscientiously doing his best for Romaine's welfare. You can see for yourself, that her consideration even for us, her mother and brother, is second to her sudden attachment for Loyd."

The significance of the words failed not duly to impress Mrs. Effingham. Her slight color faded, leaving her face ashy to the very lips.

"Can you mean," she said, with evident effort, "that some mysterious mental distemper has interested her in Loyd to the prejudice of Colston?"

"That is my suspicion."

"You think that her love has turned to Loyd?"

"Can you doubt it?"

"What would be the consequences of her return to reason?"

"Mother dear," replied Hubert Effingham, manfully, "we had better not torment ourselves with considerations for the future; we have our hands full with the present."

Meanwhile Romaine and Morton had wandered out of ear-shot of this significant conversation, into the depths of the conservatory. They had paused beneath a luxuriant lapageria, and the girl had raised caressing hands, drawing downward a cluster of its frosty bells to her lips.

The startling likeness in tint between the wan face and the ghostly blossoms, as they gleamed side by side in the moonlight, so painfully suggested the sculptured pallor of death, that Morton caught her hands in his and drew her quickly into his embrace, as he would snatch her from the brink of the grave. She resigned herself to his clasp, almost rough in its passion, without a tremor, while she glanced with a wondering smile up into his face.

"I associate those cold, scentless flowers with a certain funeral," he said with a shudder that caused her to nestle involuntarily closer to him; "I saw them near you once, and God knows I would never see them so placed again!"

"Yes, I have worn them in my hair," she said, "and they were thought beautiful with my white lace gown."

"They were laid upon your breast when I saw them last," he muttered, "and they were cut from this very vine."

"Indeed? I do not recollect."

"No, and I would not have you recollect that time, since we are united again."

"United again!" she echoed dreamily. "O Loyd, teach me to understand how we have ever been separated!"

"Rather let me teach you how fondly I love you," he whispered; "let me convince you that every heart-throb of ours distances the past—the dead past and its shadows. Let your very soul be witness to my avowal when I tell you that I love you! Paula, I love you!"

"Paula!"

She spoke the name after him in no surprise, with no intonation of perplexity. It left her lips lingeringly, as though its sound was pleasing to her ear.

"Yes, Paula," he answered eagerly; "you are Paula, Paula to me, but Romaine to the rest of the world."

"How strange," she faltered with that dreamy smile, as if fascinated.

"But you comprehend," he insisted—"you appreciate the distinction?"

"Oh, yes."

"Answer to every name in Christendom, if you will, save Paula; you are Paula alone for me!"

His impassioned emphasis seemed to charm her. Her rapt gaze enveloped his head as she lay in his arms, and there was a smile of ineffable serenity upon her lips.

"How you love that name!" she murmured.

"You taught me to love it."

"I must have, since you say so."

"You are Paula."

"Yes, I am Paula," she replied as one echoes a dictation; then, with a half-regretful sigh, "What would I not give to be able to recall the past!"

"You will recall everything in due time," he said soothingly; "I will help you."

"After all," she said after a pause, "what is the past, compared with the present? It seems like an earth-life which I have left behind; the present is heaven."

"Paula, my own true darling!" he parted in ecstasy, "you recognize me; you love me!"

"I love you, Loyd."

He bent his head to kiss the calmly smiling lips, when she raised her hand to stroke, with fond caress, his hair.

A flash like miniature lightning dazed his sight as her hand passed upward; it was simply the gleam of a diamond upon her finger; but through its white sheen peered the face of Colston Drummond, distorted with a grimace of mocking warning, and he reeled from his seventh heaven to earth, felled by that tiny shaft.

He loosened his hold upon her, and caught her hand, riveting his burning eyes upon the gem, that returned the glare with flashes of ruby fire.

"You must not wear this ring!" he exclaimed; "I cannot bear to see it upon your dear hand."

Her startled glance left his face and rested upon the exquisite jewel.

"You do not like the ring?" she inquired in a puzzled way.

"It is not a question of my like or dislike," he replied with increasing eagerness, almost with impatience. "I did not place it upon your finger; it does not belong to you, Paula."

"Oh, then take it away!" she cried, hastily twisting off the circlet; "I hate it now, although I thought it so beautiful."

Perhaps it was the utter absence of regret in her tone that brought that triumphant glitter to his eyes, as he accepted the ring and slipped it upon the little finger of his left hand.

"It shall return whence it came," he said unsteadily. "It shall trouble you no more; but in its stead you shall wear this ring, these pearls. Paula, do you not recognize them?"

As he spoke, he produced a plain gold hoop, set with three perfect pearls, and held it before her eyes.

"Pearls!" she murmured sadly; "pearls are ill-fated; they mean tears."

He cast his arm about her waist and drew her to him, still holding the ring within range of her vision.

"All portents, all auguries, all superstitions fail in our case!" he cried exultantly. "We are exempt from all baleful influences now! These pearls may once have signified tears, but now there are no more tears whence they came; they are petrified, and symbolize our happy reunion. In this supreme moment of our love, try to recollect—Paula, do you not recognize these pearls?"

A spasm of actual pain crossed the beautiful face, the result of intense mental exertion.

"O Loyd, I cannot recollect!" she faltered piteously; "and yet—. Did you not promise to help me to recall the past?"

"Yes, my darling!" he exclaimed, his passion exceeding all bounds; "and I will fulfil that promise when we have wearied of the blessed present! A new promise I will make you here and now, and that is never again to torture you with unavailing considerations; only tell me once again that you love me with all your renewed strength, with all your purified soul!"

She raised her arms and wound them about his neck.

"Loyd, I love you," she answered steadily; "I love you—love you as the angels in heaven love!"

"Of whom you are one!"

He kissed her upon the lips—a long, rapturous kiss, thrilling with the welcome of his yearning heart; with such rapture only could he have kissed the one who had been his bride, returned to him from the imminence of some awful danger or from the shadow of the grave.

As such, and in all good faith, he kissed the woman lying in his arms, in all reason believing her his loved and lost one sent back to him from the vague realms of eternity.

Suddenly he raised his head and looked into her face with something akin to fright, actuated doubtless by the shadow of a last doubt upon his certitude; as a fleeting remnant of cloud-rack after a night of storm will sometimes fleck the serenity of a perfect dawn.

Would there be a blush upon her cheek after that impassioned salute? And, if there were, would not it portend an agitation born of maiden modesty? His suspicious heart assured him that no such tell-tale hue dyes the brow in holy wedlock. And he could have cried aloud in his exceeding joy to find the sweet face as untinged as the ghostly flower-bells that hung above it.

He placed the ring of pearls upon her finger whence the flashing diamond had been removed, and kissed it into place; and she, with fond humility, received the kiss from the jewelled pledge, and returned it to his lips.

Then they passed, with their arms entwined about each other, through the dimly lighted rooms and up the stairs to the chamber, where he surrendered her into the care of her waiting-maid.

"You will not leave the house to-night?" she murmured, as their hands unclasped at the threshold.

"Not to-night," he answered softly, "nor ever, till you go with me!"

For the instant he forgot his obligation to Colston Drummond that night; but, when her chamber-door had closed and the diamond upon his hand flashed a defiant ray at the lamp upon the newel-post, he bethought himself of his inevitable engagement. However, he did not blench.

"I am master of the ring!" he murmured in triumph. "One more effort, and I go to Drummond Lodge within the hour, prepared to remove the last impediment from my path!"

At that moment he descried the figure of Mrs. Effingham crossing the hall below in the direction of the library. With rapid steps he descended the stairs and followed her. He was in search of her, since from her hand must come the final weapon destined to silence his rival.

CHAPTER VIII.

Whether or not he entertained decided views regarding the power of his personal magnetism over Romaine, it is certain that Morton felt no perturbation, no uncertainty of touch, in his management of her. Loth, as we have seen him, to admitting that he possessed any so-called mesmerism, he was convinced that he held the key to her volition, and that he need have no further anxiety on that score. Come what might, no matter what contingency might arise, he was persuaded that she would second his wishes, would obey him in any event. Why should it not be so if, as he strove to believe—nay, as he was obliged to believe or perish—she were actuated by the spirit of his wife? Doubtless he would have been stronger in his belief if that belief had not resorted to the make-shift of interrogation. He was vaguely conscious of the weakness, of the masked doubt, that a question implies—especially when it is a question of faith; and yet his very inability to answer such question satisfactorily lent him a species of Dutch courage that materially assisted him to tread his dubious way. As the belated way-farer whistles in the night or affrightedly calls upon his common-sense to assign suspicious sounds to the harmlessness of natural causes, so he groped his way, fondly believing the darkness light, satisfied if an unanswered query dispelled a doubt.

If, then, he experienced no uneasiness as regarded his management of Romaine, he was forced to admit great apprehension as to the successful control of Mrs. Effingham at the decisive moment. Granting his power of magnetism over the daughter, he had reason seriously to doubt the virtue of his occult gifts if applied to the mother.

Something of this moral hesitancy must have mirrored itself upon his countenance as he thrust aside the drapery that concealed the library door and found himself in the presence of the lady.

Serena Effingham had seated herself at the writing-table, arranged paper, and taken pen in hand; but, as the sound of Morton's footsteps reached her, she hastily dropped the pen and removed a tiny rose colored shade from the candle, the better to scan the intruder's face.

"I disturb you," he said shortly, in a tone that promptly secured her curious attention.

"No," she answered; "as you see, I am not engaged, I have not begun to write. What is it, Loyd? You have something of importance to say to me?"

She half rose as she spoke, but he motioned her back to her seat.

"Yes, something of importance to say," he replied; "a request to ask, which you can grant nowhere so well as here, since you must write."

"Write—what? To whom?"

"To Mr. Drummond."

"To Colston! He may be here during the evening; I do not doubt he will be."

"Colston Drummond will not call this evening."

Hubert's insinuations, together with the mysterious behavior of the two men earlier in the evening, recurred to her mind with unpleasant vividness; yet she hesitated to divulge alike her son's and her own involuntary espionage upon their guests. Consequently she had recourse to temporization for present safety.

"Colston would be remiss in his duty if he failed to inquire for Romaine before he slept," she remarked nervously. "Whatever may be his faults—and he has as few as any man I know—indifference is not one of them; at least, indifference as regards those he loves."

It was like her valiantly to defend the absent, and she spoke from her heart.

Morton watched her with his soul in his eyes, though he turned a shade more pallid, while the lines about his lips grew more tense as each word of hers broke the silence.

"Why should you defend him?" he asked almost harshly.

"Why?" she faltered, at a loss for words.

"Such defence as yours implies some suspicion."

"Why so?"

"Because it was wholly unprovoked."

"Loyd," the lady exclaimed, "you dislike Colston!"

"Why should I?"

"Do you not?"

"No! He is almost a stranger to me; I am not called upon either to like or dislike him. I do not belong to his sphere in life; he has simply crossed mine as a thousand and one persons meet me professionally and part, never to meet again."

"But you are likely to meet him frequently in the future."

"I think not. I confess that I am not so completely indifferent to his welfare as to hope he might some day have need of my services, which would be the only opportunity we could have of meeting."

Mrs. Effingham bit her lip to conceal some rising emotion, and toyed absently with the pen.

"Let us dismiss him from our thoughts for the present," she said with a sigh, "and attend to your request."

"I would willingly comply," Morton remarked, "but unfortunately we cannot dismiss Mr. Drummond, since he is intimately connected with my request."

She turned a swift, startled glance upon the speaker.

"Yes," he continued, coming close to the table and leaning above it; "I wish you to write to Mr. Drummond, forbidding him to come here—for the present; at least, forbid him to intrude upon Romaine until she is stronger and better able to bear his importunity."

"Loyd! what can you mean?"

"Exactly what I say. Either Mr. Drummond vacates the field to me, or I vacate the field to Mr. Drummond and such other physician as you may choose to call in. I cannot, and will not, suffer my efforts to be balked by his interference. You have placed Romaine in my charge to cure, and I will do my utmost to secure the desired end so long as I am undisturbed; any physician demands so much. If you consider me unreasonable, I beg you to say so frankly. No candid opinion, honestly uttered, ever gave offence or caused a breach in friendship. At all events, it shall not in my case."

The heroism of his words was belied by his tone, the expression of his face, his very attitude.

If Colston Drummond's rights at Belvoir were maintained in spite of Morton's semi-truthful plea, the day would be lost to him, and he knew it. If Drummond held his ground, he must retreat. He felt the solid earth beneath him changing to a shifting quick-sand, from which only a miracle could save him. If Drummond were restored to Romaine, he must leave her, and, in leaving her, leave that chimerical love to which he had become enslaved, abandon his spirit-wife—and go mad, for aught he knew to the contrary.

The suspense of that supreme moment aged him appreciably, while the reaction that succeeded well-nigh deprived him of self-control.

He could have cried aloud in the exuberance of his joy, could have flung himself upon the earth, or indulged in any other fantastic mode of relief when at last Mrs. Effingham tremulously replied,

"Come what may, you shall remain in command here. O Loyd, do not desert us in this the eleventh hour of our anxiety! In heaven's name, stand by us until your good work is accomplished! You have dragged Romaine back from the threshold of death; sustain her until the threatening portals are closed and she is safe!"

She rose as she spoke, with outstretched arms, and he hastened to her to receive her embrace.

She clung to him hysterically for a moment, then sank into her chair and with an effort caught up the pen in her trembling fingers.

"Dictate—I will write," she faltered sobbingly.

It was Morton's very good fortune that Mrs. Effingham never so much as dreamed of suspecting his perfect disinterestedness in her daughter's cause. In intrusting Romaine's life to his care, she placed in his keeping that which she considered infinitely more precious than the salvation of her own immortal soul, since she unhesitatingly considered her welfare here and hereafter as second to that of her children, such was the perfection of her maternal self-denial. From long association with her, Morton was well aware of this fact; consequently it was from prudential motives that he stepped behind her chair to conceal the guilty triumph that distorted his countenance. Had she seen his face at that moment, the depth of his deceit would have been instantly apparent to her, and this he was wise enough to know. Her woman's instinct would have warned her that he did not love Romaine for herself, that he was actuated in his devotion by some ulterior motive in which Romaine held no share. At least, he knew such to be the case, knew that his success in the future depended upon his keeping that knowledge an inviolate secret. He was well aware that the treason against Colston Drummond was vividly depicted upon his face, and that in perfect concealment of it resided his only hope of further communion with the spirit of his wife, that reincarnation in which he now as devoutly believed, as he believed in his own existence.

Be it said in his favor that he was not wholly selfish in his conduct, notwithstanding the insatiable yearning of his soul for the affinity from which he had been separated, since he felt himself to be responsible for having summoned that spirit back to earth, for having conjured it from the realms of bliss through the spell of his great love, even overcoming its reluctance to return by his importunity; but, having succeeded in his invocation, having secured the reincarnation, how could he abandon the imprisoned spirit? What right had he to leave it to pine among strangers?

What was the spirit of his wife to Drummond, or Drummond to the spirit of his wife? They had never met upon earth, and now, wrapped in a veil of invisibility, how could that spirit hope for the sympathy and love upon which it had fed, and for the renewal of which it had returned to earth?

Could he in duty, in honor, in love, desert the habitation which that blessed spirit had chosen, and leave it enslaved to a doom beside which total annihilation would seem paradise?

A thousand times, no! As the bonds of wedlock had made him responsible for the welfare of his wife, even so had this covenant with death rendered him accountable for the peace of her spirit.

Such was his self-acquittal for the high-handed deceit which he was practising upon his best of friends.

A portion at least of this defence sped involuntarily through his mind as he stood behind Mrs. Effingham's chair; and, thanks to it, he was able to regain some measure of composure, so that, when she faintly repeated the request that he should dictate the letter to Drummond, he replied with a reasonable degree of command,

"Write as your heart dictates."

"My heart fails me," she answered piteously. "I can find no words in which to forbid the man, who was to have been my son-in-law within the month, to enter my house."

It seemed to Morton then as if the threatening quick-sands were creeping about his feet again. If he failed to secure this dismissal, all would be lost.

He might go to Drummond with the ring, feeling himself well armed, but a vulnerable point would still be exposed as long as Drummond could freely seek Mrs. Effingham and demand an explanation. Perfect success to his scheme was in view, and he must secure it at all hazards!

He stepped from his concealment and boldly faced the lady, a horn of the bull in either hand.

"Believe me, Mrs. Effingham," he said sternly, "this is no child's-play; we have arrived at a decisive moment, which is not to be gainsaid. Permit me to present the question from another point of view. Suppose that I had failed in my management of Romaine's case; that you saw her steadily growing worse under my treatment instead of better; that you were satisfied that I was mistaken and surely courting death for her; would you not dismiss me ere it was too late, and summon one whose skill could save your child? Answer me that!"

"O Loyd!" she cried, "how can you ask me? How can you find it in your heart to torture me so?"

"And how can you place impediments in the way of my saving Romaine? I am simply amazed that you will run any risk where Romaine is concerned. As I said before, I now repeat—either Mr. Drummond assumes direction here, or I do; it is for you to choose between us."

"I beseech you, do not be unreasonable, Loyd; you are the physician. Have I not given you every proof of my confidence? Pursue your way undisturbed."

"That is out of the question," he answered steadily, "out of the question, while Mr. Drummond is permitted to come here. His influence upon Romaine in her present sensitive condition is disastrous. If he comes here, he will insist upon seeing her; and, if she sees him, I will not answer for the consequences. I grant you that the gentleman is not to blame for the baleful influence he exerts—indeed, I entirely exonerate him; but the fact remains that, for some mysterious reason, Romaine is reduced almost to frenzy at the very sight of him. Had you been in her chamber this afternoon when he forced an entrance there and defied my authority, you would have been satisfied that your daughter's life is a matter of a few hours' duration if she is left to his mercy!"

It was a bold stroke, and it struck home.

Hubert's hint of the "unfortunate scene" that had been enacted in Romaine's presence that afternoon recurred to Mrs. Effingham's mind most opportunely for Morton. Without further parley, she drew a sheet of paper to her, caught up the pen, and wrote in breathless haste the following entreaty:

"My Dear Colston: I beg you to appreciate the depth of my solicitude for Romaine, when I tell you that I am more than willing to assume all the blame for the pain I am forced to inflict upon you. You already know something of the critical condition of my darling child; and yet I venture to say that it is far more critical than you suspect. Complete rest and total freedom from every description of excitement are indispensable to her recovery. I shall keep her strictly removed from all social intrusion, even of the most intimate kind; and I must beg you, for the present, not to attempt to see her. Indeed, I will so far hazard the endurance of your friendship and love for me as to beseech you not even to come to the house until she is out of all danger. You may deem me a fanatic in my maternal anxiety—perhaps I am; but nevertheless I ask you to respect a mother's wishes and second a mother's prayers. I take this, possibly unwarrantable, step entirely upon my own responsibility, persuaded that your dear, noble heart will sympathize with and understand me. Hubert shall bring you daily tidings of our dear one; and, in the hope that this moral quarantine may be of brief duration, believe me,

"Ever your fondly attached friend,

Serena Effingham."

The manner in which she reached her signature suggested the broken gait of an exhausted animal that has been lashed almost beyond endurance, yet accomplishes the behest of its master with its ultimate gasp. The pen fell from her nerveless hand, and she sank back in her chair with a quivering sigh.

"Read what I have written," she gasped. "It may be utterly unintelligible."

For answer, Morton folded the sheet and placed it in an envelope.

"Address this, if you please," he said.

She obeyed his request, limply forcing herself to make the effort; and, as the pen once more fell from her fingers, she glanced up at him with a haggard piteousness in her eyes.

"Will you not read what I have written?" she asked again.

"I see no reason why I should," he answered. "I have no wish to intrude. You are simply doing your duty towards your daughter; such a proceeding is not open to criticism."

"I only hope and pray that Colston will regard my attitude in the same magnanimous light," she sighed, taking a little heart at his words.

"He will if he is truly a lover and a gentleman," was the daring reply.

Mrs. Effingham rose and, crossing the room, opened one of the casements to admit a breath of the cool night air; and at that moment a clock somewhere about the house chimed ten.

"It is so late," she remarked sadly, "that there is little danger of poor Colston's intruding upon us to-night. We may as well defer sending the note until to-morrow."

She was looking absently forth upon the engloomed landscape, to where, beyond the crest of the low-lying hills, the blood-red segment of the moon was sinking to rest; consequently she failed to note the inward fire that flashed up in Morton's haggard eyes as he hastened to reply,

"I will take a short walk before I sleep, as is my custom, and leave the note at Drummond Lodge."

She turned with an apprehensive start towards the writing-table, as if to claim the note, perhaps with a view to its destruction; but it had disappeared.

Divining her intention, Morton touched his breast. "It is here," he said, "you may trust me to deliver it safely. Romaine has requested me to remain here over night," he added, going towards the door that opened upon the hall, "and I must respect her wish. Doubtless I shall find Hubert up when I return."

He was about to leave the room, when the lady extended her arms and he was obliged to return and receive her embrace.

"Good-night," she murmured; "I shall look in at Romaine and then retire; for I am completely worn out with the events of this day. Good-night, Loyd. Ah, my dear boy! you little know what comfort it is to have you to depend upon. I have trusted you with Romaine's precious life, and you have not failed me; now I intrust to your keeping her future welfare and happiness. Be faithful. God bless you. Good-night!"

Words of strong significance they seemed to Morton, in his exalted mood. Could it be that they implied a suspicion of apostasy on his part?

Like many another constitutionally upright man, laboring in strained circumstances, he felt his "conscience hanging about the neck of his heart;" and, like many another good man, overwhelmed by the force of circumstances, he left himself no time to listen to that conscience. He grasped his hat and hurried out into the night. As he passed one of the uncurtained windows of the drawing-room, whence a belt of light fell out upon the terrace from the shaded lamps within, he paused and half involuntarily drew Mrs. Effingham's letter to Drummond from his pocket. He had not sealed it, and, as he drew the folded sheet from its envelope, he experienced a twinge of shame-faced regret that he had not read it in the lady's presence, as she had besought him to do. The desire—nay, the imperative necessity—had been with him at the time to satisfy himself to what extent her words had coincided with his requirements; but somehow he could not have brought himself to read the missive with her confiding eyes resting upon him.

Now, however, with an assurance born of the encompassing darkness, his eyes flew over the lines, gathering a gleam of hungry satisfaction in their depths as they read.

"'Indeed, I will so far hazard the endurance of your friendship and love for me as to beseech you not even to come to the house until she is out of all danger,'" he read, almost audibly. "Good! good! Nothing could be better! We are safe from his intrusion, at least for the precious present! Ah," he concluded, with savage, mirthless humor, "I am greatly mistaken in his high-mettle if she has not made him his quietus with a bare bodkin!"

He returned the letter to his pocket and hurried away to the steps that led down to the lawn, casting one backward, furtive glance at the lighted windows.

Fair-haired Achilles, armed cap-a-pie, could not have led his troops against Troy with more perfect faith in his invulnerability, in more profound assurance of his powers to vanquish, than did Morton hasten through the dew-drenched woodland that separated Belvoir from Drummond Lodge. He gave no heed to the clinging briers, no thought to the roots and stubble that vainly essayed to bar his passage. It is even doubtful if he kept to the slightly defined path; there was a single light aglow beyond the trees, towards which he bore with feverish haste. He had lost all sense of physical discomfort or opposition; it was as if, discarnate, his spirit winged impetuous flight towards the goal of its desires.

As he approached the dim mansion lying low amidst dense shrubbery, he descried a small star set low and somewhat in advance of the signal light, like some strange winged glow-worm poised in air. Soon his eager eyes were able to detach from the environing gloom the outlines of a tall man, standing with folded arms, a lighted cigar between his lips. Some instinct peculiar to his excited condition informed Morton that the solitary figure was that of Colston Drummond—long before recognition was possible.

"So he, too, has suffered an anxious moment!" he thought, an overpowering throb of triumph almost suffocating him.

A minute later the two men stood confronting each other.

The moon had set, and in the darkness a brisk, chill wind was busy among the tree-tops. Near by an owl hooted dismally, and receiving answer from the distance, hooted again in eerie ululation.

"Well?" queried Drummond, with difficulty disguising a thrill of surprise.

"I have kept my appointment," answered Morton, "earlier than I thought; earlier, probably, than you expected me."

"Well?"

"I am the bearer of a message—a note from Mrs. Effingham."

"Follow me."

Drummond threw away his cigar and led the way across the sodden grass to the open casement window, within which burned the light. It was a charming room, decorated with trophies of the chase. From floor to ceiling the walls were draped with fish-seines festooned upon antlers. Groups of arms from every quarter of the globe, glistened upon the various panels, while ancient and modern panoplies scintillated in every nook and corner. Beside a table shrouded in dull gray velvet, and littered with books, papers, and smoking-materials, Drummond paused and turned to face the shadow that followed him.

No word was exchanged, while in breathless silence he accepted and read to its close the letter which Morton had brought. Without comment he laid it upon the table, then bent his keen, stern glance upon the messenger.

"This letter is but a part of our compact," he said, each distinctly uttered word cutting the silence like a knife.

"I agreed to bring you this letter from Mrs. Effingham," Morton answered, defiantly, "and your engagement-ring from"—

"Well? You have brought it?"

"I have."

Drummond recoiled a step, casting out his hand behind him and grasping the table for support.

"Great God!" burst from his tensely drawn lips; "I—I"—

"You recognize the ring?"

Morton had slipped the circlet from his finger and held it before Drummond's eyes, twinkling in the lamp-light.

"This is some jugglery!" gasped the wretched man; "some infernal witchcraft! I—I refuse to"—

"This is your ring!"

A pause of awful import ensued, broken only by the weird hubbubboo of the owls.

"Mr. Drummond," Morton continued at length, his voice fairly startling the silence, "I have fulfilled my part of the compact. I have brought you undeniable proof that for the present, at all events, your attentions to Miss Effingham are"—

"Silence!" gasped Drummond, between his ghastly lips.

"Are distasteful to her," proceeded Morton, steadily, but with no note of triumph in his tone. "Your part of the compact involves your relinquishing all claim upon Belvoir, even as a visitor. I have accomplished my part; as a gentleman you"—

"Silence!" thundered Drummond, his whole being vibrant with an overmastering fury. "Out of my sight! or by the living God I will not be responsible for what I may do! Never fear that I shall not abide by my part of the compact! But as there is justice in heaven, I will never rest until I have probed this damnable mystery to the heart! Now, go! before the sight of you reduces me to a ravening beast! Go, before I tear your heart out, and by drawing your blood, deprive you of the power of sorcery! Out of my sight!"

Morton's return to Belvoir was effected at the height of his speed. His interview with Drummond had unmanned him; while the conscience that hung about the neck of his heart seemed to be strangling his life out in its deadly clutch. The owls, winging breast to breast, pursued him, and even the very wind caught up their vague denunciation and hurled it about his ears. Only the twinkling lights of Belvoir recalled him from the verge of madness, from the black Gehenna of his accusing soul.

CHAPTER IX.

"Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel? Why, now let me die, for I have liv'd long enough: this is the period of my ambition."

Romaine Effingham's convalescence was as rapid as the advent of summer that year. As the brief April days glided into May, she grew strong and well again; sound physically, at all events. Her mental condition remained a matter of conjecture to those who watched her with anxious hearts. Apparently she was perfectly herself, save for her infatuation for Morton which, after all, was scarcely a flattering view of the case to take. Naturally there was no reason why she should not fall in love with the young physician, setting Drummond's undeniable claims aside; but that Drummond should be set aside, for no apparent cause, in favor of Morton, argued a distemper which perhaps might most easily be placed to the account of mental aberration. It was evident that something must be seriously wrong with her that she should wholly and completely ignore the existence of her affianced lover. She never mentioned him, while if, in the common course of conversation his name chanced to be uttered, which was not often the case for obvious reasons, she maintained as unaffected an indifference as if the name of some stranger, in whom by no chance could she be interested, had been called in question.

As a matter of course Mrs. Effingham indulged in a purely sentimental view of the singular situation. If she were not betrayed into saying so, in so many words, she was convinced that as Romaine's health strengthened, her mind would resume its sovereignty, her former predilections and affections would duly re-assert themselves, and as a consequence, her dormant love for Drummond would awake and claim its idol, which had simply suffered temporary eclipse, not obliteration. The good lady felt persuaded that Romaine's love for her betrothed was dormant, not defunct.

On the other hand, man-like, Hubert Effingham was of opinion—and, true son of his father, he had the courage of his opinions—that either his sister's mind was hopelessly deranged, her unwarrantable neglect of Drummond giving ample proof of the incipience of the baleful distemper, or else she was making herself a glaring example of that frailty which is imputed to woman. Standing between the horns of a dilemma which he had evolved from his independent consideration of the question, he was satisfied that he had rather accept the former position, painful as it must be to him, than force himself to believe Romaine guilty of an inconstancy as reprehensible as it was unjustifiable. Setting aside his strong fraternal regard for Morton, Hubert esteemed Drummond one of God's noblemen, as out of doubt he was. Had Morton been the favored one primarily, Hubert would have been content; but such was his sense of justice he could not passively stand by and see Morton, deeply as he loved and respected him, usurp the rights and place of one whom he had no reason to regard with a lighter love and respect.

Such being the case, he felt himself called upon to probe the mystery and right the wrong, if wrong there were, while his mother remained in optimistic apathy. He kept his counsel and patiently awaited his opportunity.

One perfect spring morning, perhaps a week removed from that dark and perplexing day that had befallen Belvoir, Hubert met Romaine as she emerged from the house accompanied by a splendid mastiff in leash, evidently prepared for a tour of the gardens and the surrounding park. Loyd Morton had gone into the city for the purpose of making further arrangements with his friend Chalmers to attend to his practice indefinitely. For reasons best known to himself, he considered his presence indispensable at Belvoir, and no incentive had been offered him to think otherwise.

The present was the first occasion upon which brother and sister had met, since Romaine's illness, free of the surveillance of Morton. It was surely an opportunity not to be neglected.

"You are going for a walk?" inquired Hubert, engagingly.

"Yes, for our first walk, as in the good old times! Eh, Molossus?" Romaine replied, with a gay smile that embodied much of the vernal buoyancy of the morning, stooping as she spoke to stroke the tawny velvet of the dog's head.

"May I bear you company?"

She hesitated an instant, with that fascinating archness which was hers to employ with telling effect.

"Well," she remarked, "I have no objection to your company if Molossus has not; but you see we have so long been deprived of each other's companionship that—well, we are just a trifle averse to intruders. You see it seems an age since we were free and alone together."

As if to second her words the great animal pressed closely into the folds of her gown, looking up into her face the while with eloquent affection.

"The old traitor!" laughed Hubert; "what would he have done but for my devotion while you were ill? For the time being he transferred all his love to me."

"Ah, but, my dear boy, I always told you that Molossus is simply human; he feels like all of us, that first love is always the best; we return to it as if by instinct."

"Do we?" inquired Hubert sharply, scarcely able to conceal the thoughts that were uppermost in his mind; "do you find it to be true?"

"Why should I not?" she answered, with the most innocent of smiles; then, bending to the dog, she added, "Come, Molossus, we will permit this young unbeliever to trespass upon our privacy, just this once, if only to convince him how enduring a first love is."

So, side by side, the three companions passed down the steps and strolled away through the broad garden-paths, whence the crocuses and snow-drops had retired to give place to hyacinths and tulips, standing in serried lines, like small armies gorgeous in fresh uniforms. There was a general bourgeoning of rose-trees in the sun, while the perfume of shy violets was borne far and wide upon the pregnant air. It was a day of days, a halcyon day, instinct with proud summer's boast, when birds have cause to sing.

They walked along in congenial silence, the mastiff sniffing at the trim box-edging of the path, or ever and anon making abortive lunges at some new-fledged butterfly that, disturbed at their approach, winged its devious flight sunward.

Presently, after much cautious preparation, Hubert broke the charmed silence by remarking, "I have been at Drummond Lodge several times since you were ill, Romaine."

"Yes?" she replied, half unconsciously, "you found them well there?"

"Mrs. Drummond is as well as any hopeless invalid can be. Colley has gone away."

He set his eyes keenly upon her face as he spoke. Romaine was looking straight before her calmly, fancy-free.

"Gone away?" she echoed; "where?"

"No one at the Lodge seems to know."

"Not even his mother?"

"No."

She started forward suddenly, stooping to pick a tiny sprig of forget-me-not that gemmed the border.

"The very first of the season!" she exclaimed in childish delight; "you dear little blossoms! how dared you venture here before there is even a rose-bud to bear you company? Here, Hubert," she cried, "you shall wear them!"

She was about to attach the spray to the lapel of his coat, when she surprised a look of keen disappointment, almost of chagrin upon his face.

"You do not like them!" she murmured, turning sad in a moment, as an April day is obscured.

He took her hands in his gently, but there was a note of firmness in his voice, as he said,

"It is not to the flowers that I object, but to the way in which you slight their meaning."

"What can you mean?" she asked in a puzzled, nearly pained way.

"You are forgetful, Romaine."

"Of what?"

"Of your duty."

She turned pale and started back so suddenly that the mastiff, startled likewise, uttered a deep-mouthed growl.

"Of what do you accuse me?" she cried piteously. "O Hubert, my brother! what have I done?"

"What are you leaving undone?" he persisted rashly. "Ask your heart, and let it answer me—your best friend—answer me honestly."

She made a movement as though she were groping in the darkness, which young Effingham was too eager and excited to notice.

"I—I do not understand," she faltered.

"What month is this, Romaine? Is it not the month of May?"

"I think it is."

"Then what event, what happy event, was to have happened in this month, shall happen if God wills?"

"My marriage," she sighed.

"Yes, yes," he cried earnestly; "your marriage, dear—your marriage with whom?"

She twisted the blue-starred sprig between her white fingers until it wilted.

"You say you are my best friend, Hubert?" she murmured.

"You should know it, dear."

"Then I will confide in you. If—if my marriage is to take place this month—"

"Yes, yes, this month! Whom are you to marry?"

"Loyd."

The name escaped her blanched lips almost inaudibly; but his eager ear caught it, and he recoiled from her with a gasp, as though she had stung him.

She wavered for an instant, then flung out her hands blindly, as if grasping for support.

"Oh, take me into the house!" she moaned; "I am ill again."

He sprang to her side just in time to feel her delicate weight in his arms; but she did not quite lose consciousness, possibly because, in swift contrition, he whispered,

"Of course you shall marry Loyd, darling, if you will." While under his breath he added, "God forgive me, never again will I hazard her precious life, come what may! But, in Heaven's name, what does it all mean? I am satisfied that her mind is not deranged!"

Upon his return to Belvoir, Doctor Morton was surprised and alarmed to find his patient restless from sudden fever. And thereupon he registered a solemn oath never again to leave her, it mattered not how fared his clientage.

The excitement caused by Romaine's ill turn fortunately proved a false alarm. There could be no gainsaying the magic of Morton's presence. The moment she saw him, every trace of the mysterious agitation left her, the feverish symptoms vanished as suddenly as they had appeared, and, after a few gentle words of welcome, which induced his promise that he would remain within call, she lapsed into profound, healthful slumber, from which she awoke sufficiently refreshed to appear at dinner in her usual gay spirits.

Poor Hubert found himself more hopelessly mystified than ever regarding his sister's incomprehensible condition. If he could have had speech with Colston Drummond, even for the briefest space, there can be no doubt that the discarded lover's view of the situation would have gone a long way towards clearing Hubert's vision. Though much too intelligent a man of the world to sympathize in the slightest degree with the fanciful "isms" of his day, Drummond was constrained to accredit Morton with some sort of magnetic influence which had served to effect the subversion of Romaine's reason, so far as he personally was concerned. His view of her case was correct, his diagnosis accurate so far as it went. Upon the recovery of his manliness and power of cool reasoning, he was inclined to scout the fancy that any serious consequences would result from Romaine's infatuation. He argued that such caprices must be transitory, and persuaded himself, that, without his interference, affairs must right themselves, and ultimately right themselves in his favor.

However, he smarted under the lash of Mrs. Effingham's dismissal; her action wounded him far more than did the compulsory return of his betrothal-ring. He acutely judged that Romaine, being under the supremacy of Morton, was not responsible for what she might do, whereas it must be otherwise with her mother. He felt convinced that were he to go to Mrs. Effingham and masterfully demand an explanation of her attitude towards him, he could easily win her back to his side. But she had dismissed him from her house—the fact burned and rankled inwardly. He was touched in his most vulnerable point—his high-strung pride; and consequently he found himself unable to confront the passive days of exile within sight of Belvoir. It was a foolish, ill-advised step, his going away just at this important juncture; and he came to a realizing sense of his mistake ere he had placed a hundred miles between himself and the object of his heart's desire. Pride is short-lived; and, when pride dies, obstinacy ceases to seem a virtue. The truth came home to Drummond ere he had gone far from home, and with results which we shall presently see.

Hubert Effingham never favored Morton with Romaine's confidences of that unlucky moment in the garden. Much as he cared for Morton, he would have bitten his tongue off before he would have betrayed his sister—before he would have placed one pebble of impediment in the path of Drummond's cause. But, though he steered a middle course with studious fealty—though he struggled hard to be impartial in his estimate of both men—insensibly his sympathy fluttered away to the absent suitor.

Meanwhile no barrier was raised against the intimate intercourse of Romaine and her medical adviser. While she was with him, she was in abundant health and spirits; when separated, she pined; consequently, he was permitted to be her constant companion. Unmolested, they walked and drove together in the lengthening days of crescent summer. Upon such blissful occasions he invariably addressed her by the name of Paula, and she readily, happily answered to the name. Though he studied her with lynx-like intensity, he never discovered the slightest tremor of surprise that he should not address her as others did. So far he was satisfied, and in so far he fancied himself to be justified in laying the flattering unction to his soul that he was indeed in communion with the reincarnated spirit of his wife. The point which baffled him, before the non-committal front of which he shrank chilled and discouraged, was the total oblivion of all past events which that spirit evinced.

Yet he was not wholly discouraged, since he never permitted his cult of the veiled idol to overshadow his system of persistent investigation. For the hundredth time, he would endeavor to recall to her mind some sweet episode of his by-gone courtship, or briefly happy wedded life, and for the hundredth time she would reply, with that gentle smile,

"How I wish I could remember a time that must have been so joyous! Ah, my dear Loyd, I fear this poor head of mine is like the Chaldean idols—more clay than gold!"

Certainly her defective recollection of the leading events in the life of Romaine Effingham, previous to her acute illness, lent color to the supposition that Paula Morton might be equally deficient in this regard, in that both personalities were forced to act through the same disabled brain; that is, granting the doubt as to which spirit might be in residence at the time.

Naturally, the reasoning was not logical—not conclusive to a man of Morton's intelligence; and yet with it he was fain to be content.

Of one thing he was satisfied; Paula, reincarnated, could not have loved him more fondly than the beautiful being who had voluntarily abandoned every tie to bind herself to him. Sometimes he wondered, with the chill of death at his heart, how it was all to end; and she, seeming to divine the desperate query, as often as it presented itself, when he was with her, would exclaim,

"What matters it whether I recall the past or not, so long as we are happy in the present, so long as you have my love for the future and for all eternity?"

Paula might have said that in just such words; and the glamor of his fool's paradise encompassed him again. Thus the inexplicable situation, in the natural course of events, grew to a climax.

One afternoon they had been riding for miles through the park-like woodland of the neighborhood, their horses keeping leisurely pace through aisles white with the bloom of dogwood. For a while Morton had entertained his companion with reminiscences of that happy by-gone time which was a reality to him, a pleasing effort of the imagination to her. Her responsiveness was an encouragement to him; and he began at the beginning, closing with the untimely end.

There were tears—tears of genuine sympathy and sorrow—in her limpid eyes as he ceased speaking. So graphic had been his description of that last scene in the cemetery—that end-all to his hope and joy—that she seemed to see the lonely figure beside the open grave, to hear his sobs mingling with the sough of the rainy wind, and to feel the unutterable desolation of that grievous hour.

"Loyd," she said, after a brief pause, her tone suggestive of unshed tears, "you must take me to her grave some day."

"Whose grave?" he demanded sharply, her sympathy for the first time striking a discordant note in his soul.

"Her grave," she answered, wonderingly, "your wife's."

He slid from his saddle, allowing his horse to turn to the lush grass, and came to her side. He took her hand in both of his and looked up into her face with an intensity that startled her.

"That grave was your grave, Paula," he said. "Can you not understand?"

"It is hard to realize," she faltered.

"And you are my wife!"

She turned pale so suddenly that he would have been alarmed, had not the fugitive dye instantly returned deeper than before upon cheek and brow.

"Your wife!"

"My wife in the sight of God! Oh, have no doubt of it; for your indecision would drive me mad! Paula was my wife, and you are Paula!"

"Yes, but Paula in another form."

"Exactly! But still my wife!"

"Not in the sight of man."

"Then the sooner we are made one again, the better!" he went on impetuously. "See, you wear your own betrothal-ring. Can you, will you submit to the absurdity of a second marriage ceremony, for the sake of the blind world's opinion?"

"I can and will," she answered.

"Then let there be no delay!"

He reached up, and, bending low, she kissed him upon the lips; and she did it so frankly, trustingly, that henceforth he banished every doubt, every vestige of uncertainty to that vague realm whither much of his outraged common-sense had fled.

Late that night a wailing cry startled the quiet of the house—a cry low, but sufficient in carrying-power to rouse Mrs. Effingham from the depths of her first sleep. Hurrying, breathless with apprehension, through the dressing-room which separated her chamber from Romaine's, speechless was her amazement and alarm to find the girl standing before her mirror, the candelabra ablaze on either side, robed from head to foot in white, the splendid masses of her hair sweeping about her shoulders. Upon her exquisite neck and arms scintillated rivulets of diamonds, heir-looms of the Effingham family, which descended to each daughter of the house upon her eighteenth birthday; while in her hand, held at arm's length, glittered an object which had the sheen of blent gold and jewels—a tiny object that fitted softly into the snowy palm. Upon this object were her eyes riveted, with a sort of wild dismay in their inspection. She seemed entranced, and for a minute the watcher dared give no sign of her intrusion.

CHAPTER X.

The events which led up to the somewhat dramatic climax in Romaine's chamber at midnight would scarcely seem to warrant so pronounced a crisis. An agreeable evening had been passed in the music-room, Morton and Hubert smoking, Mrs. Effingham busied with some bit of fancy-work, while Romaine played the piano or sang, as her mood suggested. She was an ardent musician, possessed of a fine mezzo-soprano voice, which had been trained in the best schools. Her fancy was for the fantasticism of the more modern composers; and upon this occasion, being in the vein, she sang, with remarkable effect, the weird night-song of the slave in Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba," the dreamy Berceuse from "Lakme" and two or three of Meyer Helmund's idyllic creations. The vibrant tenderness and surpassing melody of her voice filled her hearers with wonder. Never had she sung with such depth of feeling; and they marvelled at it, regarding the performance as a revelation. Naturally, as the evening wore on, a reaction set in, a pallid exhaustion took the place of the heightened color of cheek and lip, and finally Romaine rose from the piano unnerved and hysterical. The party promptly broke up, and Mrs. Effingham led the way to her daughter's chamber.

By eleven o'clock the good lady had left Romaine, apparently calm and at peace with herself, in the hands of her maid, and had retired for the night.

The gown of India silk had been exchanged for a garment of soft white wool, the peculiar flowing pattern of which suggested the graceful robes of Watteau and Greuze, and in it the young mistress of Belvoir reclined at ease upon her couch. So lost was she in revery, that she took no heed of the maid, who, her preparations for the night completed, glided to the back of the couch and stood waiting. The Dresden clock's faint tick became audible, and presently the chime rang out. The oppressive silence broken, the maid spoke:

"Will Miss Romaine have her hair brushed now?"

Romaine turned with a start, casting one exquisitely moulded arm up to the back of the couch, so that she faced the speaker.

"I must have been asleep or in a trance!" she exclaimed in a dazed way. "No, no, Eunice; I will braid my hair to-night. Go to bed. It is late. See, it is half-past eleven."

"But, miss, I—"

"Yes, I know you would work over me until you dropped from sheer fatigue," the young lady went on, with a smile; "but I shall not permit it—not to-night. I prefer to be left alone. Good-night."

Reluctantly the maid vanished, closing the door behind her.

The instant she disappeared, Romaine rose and stood in the faint glow of the single candle, her white robe lying in ample folds about her.

"At last I am alone!" She listened intently for some sound in the silent house. "Alone—with my thoughts of him! How he loves me; but," with a fluttering sigh, "how he loved that other one—that Paula! Am I she? He says I am; and who should know as well as he? Oh, it is all so strange, so mysterious, that—that I cannot tell. His great love assures me that I must have lived before. When I am with him, I am as sure as he; but, when he is not with me, I seem to doubt, to be groping somewhere, as it were blindfold, among familiar scenes. O Loyd, sustain me, be my guide, or I shall fall by the wayside, fainting, helpless!"

She crossed her chamber and stood before her mirror, gazing intently at her reflection. Presently she withdrew the golden pin from her hair and let its rich masses fall about her shoulders like a bronze-gold veil.

"His wife!" she murmured, smiling wanly at her image; "his wife again after some lapse of time! How long a time? Ah, does he detect some change in me which he is too loyal to notice? With time, come change and decay. How can I tell how changed I may be—in his sight?" She shuddered, and peered more keenly at the mirror. "If I am changed," she concluded, with a pretty assumption of desperate resolution, "it is my duty to repair the ravages of time. I will be dressed like any queen at her bridal. I will wear all my jewels, and let their lustre conceal defects from even his generous eyes. He loves me; but I must struggle to hold that love. My jewels! Where are my jewels? How shall I look in them?"

With feverish haste she opened the compartments of the toilet-table until her eager hands fell upon a casket of dull red leather, faded and bruised. Within, however, the velvet cushions were as fresh and white as though newly lined; there was no more hint that four generations had gazed upon their sheeny lustre than there was hint of age in the priceless gems that nestled, glittering like captured stars, amid their depths.

Romaine uttered a sigh of delight, and, with eager, trembling hands, hung the chained brilliants upon her neck and arms. Then she lighted the candelabra beside the mirror, and stood back, speechless before her own surpassing beauty.

"Would he could see me now!" she exclaimed naÏvely, entranced, then bent forward to insert still other jewels in her ears.

At that moment an object set in gold and rimmed with diamonds caught her eye. She had not noticed it before, but now it riveted the inspection of her very soul.

She snatched it from the case with a low, wailing cry, akin to the smothered utterance of one laboring in nightmare, and held it at arm's length, breathless, speechless.

Simply a medallion set in gems, the medallion of a man's face—the face of Colston Drummond!

And it was at this moment, supreme enough to thrill poor Romaine's reviving intellect, that Mrs. Effingham hastily entered the chamber.

The lateness of the hour, coupled with her daughter's incongruous toilet, startled the good lady into the passing fancy that some unexpected crisis had arrived—that Romaine had indeed taken leave of her senses. She uttered some stifled exclamation and stood spell-bound. As quick as thought the girl dropped the miniature into its case and turned to confront the intruder.

"Mother!" she exclaimed, her voice trembling with repressed emotion, "thank heaven, you have come! Otherwise I should have been forced to wake you, for I cannot sleep, I cannot wait another hour, another minute. I must speak now, this instant!"

She came to her mother and laid her jewelled arms about her neck, her very attitude eloquent of the yearning of her soul.

It was with the utmost effort that Mrs. Effingham commanded herself sufficiently to conceal the dire apprehension that assailed her.

"And so you shall speak, my darling," she answered soothingly, as one would humor a perverted fancy; "unburden your whole heart to me."

"Mother, I was to have been married this month."

"Yes, my dear child."

"How many days are we from the date proposed?"

The anxious pallor of the lady's face overspread her lips and she hesitated.

"What does it matter, dear?" she faltered.

"What does it matter!" echoed Romaine steadily; "it matters much—to me. Events have become confused in my mind since my illness; so you must tell me how soon I was to have been married. You must tell me, for I wish to know."

"The twentieth of May was the day appointed," was the reluctant reply.

"And it is now?"

"The fifth."

"More than a fortnight to wait! And delays are dangerous. Mother, I have seen my wedding-dress in the east room. Is everything prepared?"

"Everything, Romaine."

"Then why delay, and so court danger? Let my marriage take place at once, the sooner the better."

"Romaine!"

"Loyd has spoken to-day; he would second my petition were he here."

"Loyd!"

She recoiled out of the girl's embrace as she spoke, and stood staring at her in blank amazement.

"Loyd!" she added faintly; "it is Loyd you wish to marry?"

"Whom else?" answered Romaine, smiling calmly; "you would not doubt it, mother dear, if you knew all. Oh, I am not demented, as perhaps you think. I am myself again, thanks to the magnetism of his great love. Mother, if I thought that he were never to have the right in the sight of God and man to call me wife, I should pray for death—ay, court it as the sweetest boon. Thwart me in my love, and you kill me; grant my prayer, and you not only give me life, but heaven upon earth!"

It cannot be said that Mrs. Effingham was wholly unprepared for the turn affairs had taken. Setting aside Hubert's expressed suspicions, her woman's instinct had vaguely warned her how this inexplicable course of love had raised Morton upon its bosom, leaving Drummond high and dry, stranded upon the stale and unprofitable shore of Neglect. And yet, out of sheer loyalty to Drummond and his interests, she had refused to listen to that mysterious voice, stiller and smaller than the voice of conscience. She had waited to be convinced by some ulterior medium which, after all, she knew could but accord with her own unacknowledged convictions.

From her son next day she received but cold comfort, though it was gently offered, according to his wont.

"I told you so," he remarked. "For Colley's sake, I have done what I could, only to be met by dismal failure. I will never venture to risk so much again. We must accept the inevitable, dear mother, and make the best of a situation which, if inexplicable, is far from desperate. I can only say, God grant that Romaine's determined action may not prove to be some insane caprice!"

"Amen to that!" came the faltering reply.

The lady's first interview with Morton after the revelation was managed in more diplomatic fashion.

She met the young physician in the garden before breakfast on the following morning. She kissed him in silence, and held his hands while the unbidden tears welled within her haggard eyes.

"Romaine has spoken!" he exclaimed, interpreting the mute eloquence of her attitude.

She bowed her head in assent.

"And you—you have given your consent?" he asked tremulously.

"Did you not warn me that it might be fatal to thwart Romaine in any way?"

"That is not answering my question," he said with sudden sternness; "do you give your consent to our marriage?"

"Romaine's peace of mind is paramount to all other considerations," she answered; "her will is my law."

"But you are reluctant to give her to me."

"I know no reluctance where her wishes are concerned. I have closed my eyes to every other consideration save her happiness, Loyd; and with all my heart I give her to you—for her sake."

And with, such modicum of consolation he was obliged to be content.

Considering the eminent social position of the persons concerned, it is small wonder that the report of Romaine's change of heart swept society like a whirlwind. The indignation that was expressed on the score of the young lady's so-called frailty was not occasioned by the fact that the fashionable world loved Morton less, but that it loved Drummond more. Had the latter gentleman stood by his guns, he would have been the hero of the hour and received a greater meed of sympathy than is usually vouchsafed the banished lover; but, as he had played the renegade when he should have formally opposed his rival, society shrugged its shoulders, and saw to it that Morton's prowess did not want praise and esteem. Thus ever does the myopic world deceive itself.

It was decided that the ceremony should be accomplished upon the twelfth day of the month, that it should be conducted with the strictest privacy, and that no invitations should be issued. Of course there would be "after-cards," and in due course there would be receptions upon the return of the pair from a sojourn in Europe. Such were the hasty arrangements, to which all concerned agreed.

The change from doubt to certainty operated most favorably upon Morton—the galling irritability of the past few weeks vanished; the natural buoyancy of his early youth returned; he seemed to find a zest in living, which was a surprise and delight to no one more than to himself.

Romaine, on the other hand, though to all appearance happy and content, endured nameless torture when left to herself—her nights were hideous epochs of harassing suspense and misgiving; the unattended hours of her days were rendered unbearable by some invisible incubus which, she was neither able to explain nor banish. Ever and anon she would seem to herself to be upon the verge of some explanation, some solution of the enigma with which she wasted herself in unavailing battle; but no sooner did she find herself approaching this most desirable consummation, than she fell into the toils of Morton's irresistible influence, and was content to find herself the victim of his soothing wiles. In a word, her meditations upon the subject simply resolved themselves into this formula: When I am with him, I love him beyond question; when I am not with him, my love is crossed by doubt.

As if by instinct Morton divined the threatening condition of her mind, and consequently left no stone unturned to hasten the preparations for his marriage. Circumstances forced him, in great measure, to relax his sedulous care and espionage. To all appearance he found his patient as hale, mentally and physically, as she had ever been; and, though he was by no means free of apprehension on her account, he did not scruple to absent himself as often as he found it necessary for him to make some adjustment of his affairs in view of an indefinite sojourn abroad. Then, too, he experienced the liveliest satisfaction in setting his somewhat neglected house in town in order, and in beautifying its every detail for the reception of his bride. The wilful, methodical nature of the man manifested itself in just such minutiÆ as the hanging of a drapery here, or the placing of an ornament there, that he might satisfy himself as to the exact appearance of the place when she should come home to it—it mattered not when. He trusted no one; he placed no confidence in judgment other than his own. It was a labor of love; and, like a labor of love, it had long since become a work of faith, as was meet—especially under the circumstances.

Several hours of each day Morton passed in the city, and perhaps nothing afforded such ample proof of his confidence in the establishment of affairs as the composure and assurance with which he returned each time to Belvoir. The truth was, he had made assurance double sure, and taken a bond of Fate—or so he was constrained to regard his successful course.

It was during one of these occasions of non-attendance, a day or two after the rumor of the engagement had spread its facile wing, that an imposing family-carriage, decorated as to its panels with the ensign armorial of the Drummonds, turned in at the gates of Belvoir, and entered upon the gradual ascent of the avenue with the cumbrous roll of stately equipages in general, and of the Drummond equipage in particular. Upon the hammer-cloth were seated an ancient coachman and footman, most punctilious of mien and attire; while within the coach, bolstered into an upright position among the cushions, sat a lady well into the decline of life and health, a spare, stern creature, with the face of an aged queen. It was a face from which the effulgence of halcyon days had died out, but despite the rigidity of its lines it was still a countenance replete with an inborn dignity. Letitia Drummond had been a beauty in her day, and it was some consolation to her in her decline, to find something of her famed advantages revived in her only and beloved son.

This son was her idol, in her eyes a very paragon; her worship of him was the one vital interest of her invalid existence. Secluded from the world by reason of her malady, she drew vitality from her communion with him as the frail, unearthly orchid subsists upon the air which its hale neighbors reject.

It had been years since the widow Drummond had entered her carriage, and she had by no means dared exposure to the dampness of this May morning for a trifle. As the horses leisurely took their way along the avenue the lady glanced forth upon the luxurious verdure of lawn and budding trees, with a critical scrutiny not unmixed with malevolence.

Presently the glimpse of a girlish figure gathering lilacs in a by-path, riveted her attention. Quickly she touched a bell, and in the next instant the coach had stopped and the footman was at the open door.

"I see Miss Effingham," she remarked; "give me my cane and help me out. There! Now drive on a short distance, remain there ten minutes, then return for me here. You understand."

The command was given in a grudging tone, as if each word, each breath of the balmy air cost her a pang.

From her lilac-bower Romaine had watched the proceeding in wonder; but as the carriage departed, leaving the withered figure, wrapped in its finery of a by-gone date, standing alone in the sunshine, she came forward, her hands filled with snowy blossoms.

They met beside a rustic garden-seat, beneath hawthorns full of rosy bloom and the carolling of birds.

As Romaine paused, irresolute, the lady spoke:

"You recognize me?"

"You are Mrs. Drummond."

"I am Mrs. Drummond, Colston's mother."

She had drawn her weapon, and seemed figuratively to be examining the keenness of point and edge.

Romaine shuddered.

"Where is he?" demanded the lady.

"Where is—who?"

"Who!—who but my son? Whose absence in all this wide world should I give an instant's thought to but my son's? For whom else should I dare misery and perhaps death to inquire for but my son! Answer me! where is he?"

Poor Romaine had grown as pallid as the flowers that trembled and dropped one by one from her nerveless hands.

"Answer me!" repeated Mrs. Drummond; "I am his mother, and I will not be satisfied with any white-lipped silence. What have you done with my son? Where is he?"

"I—I do not know."

Most hearts would have been touched by the pitiful innocence of those words and look.

"You do not know. I will believe you so far; but why has he left his home—and me?"

"How can I tell?" faltered the girl.

"I can imagine you experience some difficulty," was the harsh reply, "but I mean to remove all obstacles from your path so that you can tell, and also give me a coherent account. He had entrusted his happiness to your keeping; he had divided his love for me with you. What account have you to give of your stewardship?"

The helpless attitude of the girl coupled with her wild-eyed silence, seemed to infuriate the lady.

"No wonder you do not dare to raise your voice to answer me," she cried shrilly; "faithless, false-hearted girl! You have wrecked his life! And when the news of your ill-assorted marriage reaches him, it will kill him, and I shall not survive his death! Jezebel!" she hissed, griping Romaine's arm in her gloved claw, "do you comprehend that two lives, two God-given lives will be upon your soul when you have consummated this unholy deed? I would die for my son. I would even be branded with crime for the sake of his peace and happiness! I love him! And what has your vaunted love amounted to? Answer me, or I will smite that mutely-mocking mouth of yours! Have you not told him a thousand times, have you not assured him by word, by deed, by action that you loved him? Answer me!"

"Yes," came the gasping reply.

"Then why have you played him false?"

"Oh, I do not know, I—I cannot tell!"

She cast the delicate arm from her as though the contact were contamination.

"I hope to heaven you are insane, as it is whispered," she gasped, weak from excess of anger and feebleness; "madness would be your only salvation in my eyes. But I have my doubts, I have my doubts. I shall raise heaven and earth to find my son, I shall go in search of him myself if messengers fail, and when he is found I shall send him to you, and I only pray that the sight of him may strike you dead at his feet if he comes too late!"

The grinding of the returning carriage-wheels upon the gravel of the avenue interrupted her further utterance, and in silence she hobbled back to the footman, who obsequiously replaced her upon her cushions.

Left alone amidst the whispering leaves, the sunshine and the birds, Romaine slowly struggled back to semi-consciousness. She pressed her hands upon her throbbing temples, while dry sobs rent her from head to foot.

"O what have I done?" she sobbed, "and what am I doing?"

Like one stricken with sudden blindness she felt her way from tree to tree, leaning against their trunks every now and then for support. In this pitiful way she reached the terrace-steps, stumbled and fell prostrate in the garish light, like a stricken flower discarded by the reapers.

CHAPTER XI.

If Serena Effingham derived any comfort from the contemplation of Romaine's precipitate union with Morton, that comfort resided in the fact that having secured the constant attendance and companionship of the young physician, the girl would enjoy immunity from the mysterious crises that were likely to assail her whenever he was not at hand. There was no gainsaying the point that Romaine was perfectly herself while under Morton's influence. No one could deny the potency of the spell he exerted; consequently Mrs. Effingham was forced to accept the lesser of the evils, if so strong a term may be applied to her gentle estimate of the situation.

It was the good lady herself who discovered her daughter lying insensible at the foot of the terrace steps; and as Romaine, upon the recovery of her consciousness, guarded the secret of her stormy interview with Mrs. Drummond even from her mother, who was in ignorance of the unwonted visit, Mrs. Effingham remained in an agony of suspense and anxiety until Morton returned from town. At sight of him the girl flung herself into his arms and clung to him hysterically, to the perplexity of all concerned.

When questioned regarding the cause of her illness, she returned answers of adroit incoherency, simply maintaining that her existence was a burden to her when separated from Morton; that she was wholly wretched and unable to command herself when left to herself. Naturally such extraordinary assertions lent color to the suspicion that her mind was affected; yet, when in the presence of her heart's desire, she appeared perfectly sane and as soundly reasonable as ever she had been. Her condition seemed a hopeless mystery to all save Morton who was persuaded beyond peradventure, that he detected the almost jealous reliance of his departed wife through the mask of her reincarnation.

From that time forth he no longer absented himself from Belvoir, and the expectant hours crowded themselves into days that all too rapidly took their departure.

The eve of Romaine's wedding-day proved to be one of those rare epochs of spring that are instinct with the genial presage of summer, one of those intense days which May has in her gift, when one involuntarily seeks the shady side of city streets, or wanders into the shadows of the woods to escape the garish splendor of the open fields. Such weather is always premature and ominous of impending inclemency; but it is none the less exquisite while it lasts.

All day long the lovers had luxuriated in the balmy air, and the setting sun surprised them bending their reluctant steps homeward through Drummond copse. One by one the swift hours had registered their happiness, their constantly reiterated oaths of fealty and their expressions of confidence in the future. They had uttered nothing worthy of being chronicled, for they had talked simply as lovers talk, with an intent significant only to themselves. They had laid their plans for the future as the poets fancy the short-sighted birds scheme at their nest building. Morton had proposed that, the ceremony over, they should drive to his town-house and there, amidst its renovated glories, forget the world until such time as they cared to claim its diversions again. There was method in the plan since he entertained some vague fancy that his reclaimed wife would be more at her ease, more at home among scenes which had witnessed the happiest hours of her past. And Romaine's joyous acquiescence increased his fancy until it became positive conviction. He even went so far as to surmise that the soul of Paula would evince a keen delight and interest in the new beauties of the old abode.

So the sun had set and the full moon had reared her colossal lamp to light them home. Suddenly, as they emerged from the copse and found themselves upon the rustic path that ran between Belvoir and Drummond Lodge, Romaine laid her hand upon her lover's arm with a sharp gasp.

"I have left my book up yonder upon the rocks where we sat!" she exclaimed; "oh, Loyd, how careless of me! and you gave it me!"

Morton laughed light-heartedly.

"We will send one of the men for it in the morning," he said; "there will be no pilfering lovers in that place to-night, I warrant you."

"But it will be ruined by the dews," she insisted; "we may forget to send for it to-morrow; besides, I do not wish to leave it there. I will go back and get it."

"You!" he cried, with a laugh; "if you must have the worthless thing, I will go for it."

"We will go together, Loyd."

"No," he objected, in the gently authoritative tone which had become habitual with him, "you are completely tired out and the climb would prove the one straw too many. But how can I leave you here?"

"What is there to fear? We are within gun-shot of home."

Morton hesitated an instant; then he said with some reluctance,

"Would you mind walking on alone? I will make haste, take a short cut through the copse and meet you upon the lawn."

"Very well! I will walk slowly."

For some reason, which it would be vain to attempt to account for, he stooped and kissed her where she stood in a mellow ray of the risen moon.

"Why are you so particular about that little book?" he asked tremulously.

"I have already told you, dear," she answered.

"Because I gave it you?"

"Yes; for that reason it is precious, invaluable in my eyes."

"My darling! God bless you for those sweet words! To hear them from your dear lips again I would go to the ends of the earth!"

It was simply lovers' parley, but for some reason each felt its vague significance which in some way seemed portentous. He kissed her again, and left her alone in the woodland path.

At one period of her life, that happy time when a trip to Drummond Lodge had been numbered among the chief joys of her innocent life, Romaine had been familiar with every wild flower that bloomed, with every bird that sang in the copse; but since her mysterious illness all that had passed and the place seemed strange to her. Small wonder then that, in the exaltation of parting with Loyd Morton and in the dubious moon-beams, she turned, not towards Belvoir, but in the direction of Drummond Lodge. The night was one of ideal loveliness and as she leisurely threaded her way between the shadows cast by the great tree-boles, she softly sang to herself and smiled as her quick ear caught the twitter of the nesting birds. Suddenly the sharp snap of a twig punctuated the chant and its invisible chorus, causing the girl to pause abruptly and peer before her into the semi-gloom.

Could it be that love had lent her lover the fleetness of Fortunio's lackey, so that he had accomplished his quest and returned to surprise her ere she had reached the verge of the wood? Impossible! And yet the figure of a man loomed before her in the narrow, moon-lit path! Her heart fluttered, then sank like a dead thing in her bosom, while the words of glad welcome expired upon her blanched lips.

For she had recognized the man, and, by some swift divination of association, knew that he had a right to be where he stood—within his own domain.

The effect of the unexpected encounter was scarcely less patent in the case of Colston Drummond. He uttered some inaudible exclamation of surprise, halted, then advanced a step, staring at the apparition in awed silence.

"Romaine!" he murmured at last, as if fearful of breaking the spell and dissolving the vision by the mere sound of his voice; "Romaine, can it be you—here—at this hour? In heaven's name, where are you going?"

"Home," she faltered, her very utterance paralyzed by amazement and vague fear.

"Home!" he echoed more distinctly, emboldened by the vital voice of the phantom; "you are going in the wrong direction. You are but a few steps from the Lodge. My poor girl, why are you here and alone?"

He spoke with the infinite tenderness which was part and parcel of his manly nature; and, though he came close to her side, even taking her hand in his, she did not cringe. Somehow she felt soothed and calmed by his presence, notwithstanding that she trembled as the environing leaves trembled in the rising breeze, and did not speak for lack of self-command.

"Do not shiver so," he said gently; "it is neither cold here, nor have you any cause for alarm—with me. You have only lost your way. Come, I will see you safely home."

Then she roused from her passing stupor.

"Oh no, no, no!" she cried piteously; "I must go alone. I—he is waiting for me. He must not see you—with me. Only show me the way."

"He!" Drummond asked calmly; "you mean Doctor Morton?"

She bowed in silence, while an unfathomable expression flitted across his face, to be lost in a pitiful smile.

"Well," he said, still holding the hand that she weakly strove to wrest from him, "he can wait for a few short minutes."

"No, no, I must go at once," she wailed; "have mercy upon me; let go my hand."

"Think, Romaine!" he commanded softly; "he will have you for all life, while these few paltry moments with you are all that remain to me. Think of it, Romaine, and be generous."

She looked into his face and read the anguished pleading of his eyes.

"First of all," he continued, "tell me how you came here? May I venture to hope that in the eleventh hour you were coming to speak a word of comfort to my mother?"

"No, I had lost my way."

"You did not know that I returned to-day?" he inquired, hope struggling against hope in his eager tone.

"I had forgotten that you had been away."

"You had forgotten!" he cried sadly. "O Romaine, how you have blotted me from your very existence! I can conceive of your love for me having changed; but why have you so utterly forgotten and neglected me?"

She closed her eyes and replied in sobbing accent, "I—I cannot tell. I seem to have been dreaming, to be dreaming still."

"Would it were all a dream! My darling—there—there, do not start, it is the last time that I shall ever call you so—darling, I only pray the good God that you are happy."

She did not answer, and he went on as though he did not notice her silence.

"Only to-day, within the last two hours, have I learned that to-morrow will be your wedding-day. Is—is it so?"

"Yes."

"Can you fancy what that means to me? Oh, heaven is my judge, I do not mean to reproach you. It is too late for that. I did not even think to see you again; it is some inexplicable fate which has brought us together. Believe me, I am resigned to my lot; but, since we have met, since God in His mercy has vouchsafed me this one ray of comfort, permit me to beg you, to beseech you ever to regard me as your loyal friend. O Romaine, my heart's dearest love, if ever the shadow of sorrow or trouble arises, command me, even unto my last breath, and I will do my utmost to dispel it. I wish you joy, from my soul, I wish you joy; I have forgiven, and I shall try to forget. If you doubt me, try me; test my fidelity to you even unto death. Now, Romaine, have you no word for me? no little grain of comfort to leaven the bitterness of this last farewell upon earth? Be merciful!"

With the steadiness of summer rain the tears had been coursing over the girl's pallid cheeks, and there were tears in her voice as she cried,

"O my God! let me sleep and continue to dream, for, should I awake, I should go mad!"

He took her in his arms and pressed her to his breast for one brief moment, while his kisses mingled with the tears that rained upon her shining hair. "I understand, I understand," he murmured brokenly, gently putting her from him; "God help us both! Yonder is your way. Hark! he is calling you! I need not go with you. Dry your tears and greet him with a smile; perhaps it is better so, for I am not worthy of you. Some day we shall know—Good-by, my darling. Go, go quickly! He must never know that we have met. May God bless and keep you!"

He continued to speak until she had vanished among the clustering shadows, the weird call of the distant voice punctuating his broken utterances. When at last she had really gone, and he found himself actually alone, he fell upon his face in an agony of desolation, stifling his sobs in the depths of the lush grasses.

And it was a crest-fallen, pallid being who came forth from the dimness of the woods to relieve Morton's anxiety.

"In mercy's name, where have you been?" he exclaimed, hastening to her as she emerged into the lambent ways of the moon, and eagerly clasping her hand in his.

"I lost my way," she faltered, with downcast eyes, vainly striving to conceal the tears that glistened upon her lashes.

"But you have been weeping!"

"I became confused and frightened," she explained. She was about to add, "it seemed so lonesome without you;" but the words remained unuttered.

As they walked side by side across the dewy lawn, Morton was not so much impressed by the incoherency of the explanation of her present condition as by the subtle change which had come over her within those few minutes. What could have caused it, he was completely at a loss to surmise; what it might portend, he could not conjecture; but that some mysterious change had taken place in her, he was as certain as though she had said in so many words,

"You should have been far-sighted enough not to have left me alone for an instant until I am irrevocably yours!"

He suffered the torture of a lifetime in those few brief moments; and the torment was all the more poignant that it was too vague to impart, even if he had dared so to do.

Long ere they reached the house, the silence became so oppressive that in sheer despair he was forced to break it.

"I found the book," he remarked with effort, displaying the dainty volume.

She did not offer to take it from him, as he expected, as he fondly hoped; she simply replied, with eyes intent upon the ground,

"I am sorry to have given you so much trouble."

As if by instinct he felt as if virtue had gone out of him. How, when, or why, he could not determine, but in that hour an occult warning came home to him—a presage that his empire over Romaine Effingham was no longer supreme.

Had he known, had he even suspected, that Romaine would weep herself to sleep that night with Colston Drummond's jewelled miniature upon her bosom, he would have pulled himself together, banished the spell that held him in thrall, and thus averted the catastrophe that the pregnant moments hastened to consummate.

CHAPTER XII.

The augury of the preceding day's perfection proved correct—Romaine's nuptial morn came up, veiled in murky clouds that promised a period of dismal rain. The very face of nature, of late so bright and jocund, suffered an obscuration that left it gray and drear. By sun-rise the mists crept swiftly up the hill-sides, revealed the verdant landscape for a moment, and then, as their custom is, descended in a persistent, chilling downpour.

Morton and Hubert were the only members of the household to meet at the breakfast-table, which the butler had striven to render resplendent, in honor of the occasion, by masses of ghastly Freesia and Narcissi.

The conversation of the two men during the repast was desultory in the extreme. There were dark rings around Morton's eyes, which betrayed a sleepless night; he was nervous and constrained in manner, while the wan pallor of his face contrasted sharply with the unrelieved blackness of his garments. It was with evident relief that the brothers-elect left the table and separated by tacit consent.

It had been agreed that the ceremony should be solemnized in the conservatory at noon, after which the wedded pair should at once be driven to Morton's house in the city. The preparations were of the simplest description, if the mere removal of the rustic seats from the conservatory could be considered such.

To be sure, as the appointed hour drew nigh, various wines were placed upon the sideboard in the dining-room, where a bridal-cake occupied the centre of the table, upon which lay bride-roses and lilies-of-the-valley in richly fragrant garlands. Servants in holiday attire went hither and thither with muffled step; otherwise the house maintained the most sepulchral silence. No sound of approaching equipage disturbed the rainy day without; even the birds restrained their plaintive twitter beneath the dripping leaves. It was as if some invisible dead lay in state during that ominous lull which precedes the arrival of the mourners.

Left to himself, Morton paced to and fro in the library. He grew calmer, but by degrees more pallid, as the hours wore to noon, until, when the clergyman was ushered into his presence, his stern composure impressed the man of God as most extraordinary. It was only when the slowly chiming clocks proclaimed the appointed hour, that Morton evinced the least animation. He sprang from his chair, while a hectic glow flashed into his face, and motioned the clergyman to follow him. Scarcely had they entered the conservatory when Romaine appeared, leaning heavily upon her brother's arm, and similarly supported upon the other side by her mother. A very bride of death she looked, her splendid attire rather heightening than relieving her pallor. She wore no jewels, as she had once proposed to do; and she had no need for them, since, if ever loveliness needed not the foreign aid of ornament, but was, when unadorned, adorned the most, Romaine Effingham in her bridal hour proved an exemplar.

They guided her faltering steps forward and gave her into Morton's keeping. He received her with feverish eagerness, and she seemed to thrill beneath his touch as he murmured some word into her ear that summoned the phantom of an answering smile.

Thereupon ensued an ominous pause, broken only by the servants as they grouped themselves at a respectful distance, and by the pitiless patter of the rain upon the glazed roof overhead.

Then the solemn words were pronounced which made the twain one—pronounced to the last Amen, without let or hindrance, and Romaine Morton turned to her husband to receive his kiss. She seemed strong and relieved in spirit as she accepted the tearful embraces of her mother and brother, betraying the while her haste to escape from the thraldom of her nuptial robes, and to be gone to meet the new life upon the threshold of which she stood.

During the progress of her change of costume she seized her opportunity, when unheeded by her mother, to slip a note, addressed to Colston Drummond, into her maid's hand, with the whispered petition that it be delivered as soon as she had left the house. And the loyal little confederate was already upon her way to Drummond Lodge as the carriage containing the wedded pair dashed into the sodden country road that led citywards.

It is needless to state that that day had proved the heaviest of Colston Drummond's existence. It is true that he had brought himself to that pitch of resignation which closely resembles apathy, but he suffered none the less the dull misery that inevitably succeeds acute anguish.

Though he was in ignorance of the hour which should make the idol of his life another's, it was enough that his doom was destined to be sealed at some period of the fatal span between sunrise and sunset. In accordance with his wishes, he had been left in undisturbed solitude during the morning hours, and, as he took no heed of the flight of time, the servant who intruded to announce the messenger from Belvoir found him stretched upon a divan in his sanctum, where he had received Morton that night, long weeks before.

Promptly recognizing the maid, he sprang to his feet, breathlessly demanding the object of her visit.

"I am the bearer of a note from my mistress, sir," the girl replied.

"From Mrs. Effingham?"

"From Mrs. Morton, sir."

He wavered for an instant, but, quickly recovering himself, he groaned,

"Then the marriage has taken place?"

"It has, sir."

"Then what can she want of me?" he muttered inaudibly, as he accepted the missive and broke the seal.

He read Romaine's letter to the close with no outward sign of emotion, beyond a trembling of the hands, which he was powerless to repress. Suddenly, however, he raised his eyes, and there was the fire of an invincible resolution in their depths as he demanded,

"Mrs. Morton has left Belvoir?"

"Yes, sir, more than an hour ago."

"Have you an idea where she has gone?"

"To Doctor Morton's house in the city."

"Thank you—stay; you will be faithful to your mistress and—and to me," he added gently, "and you will keep your errand a secret?"

"You may trust me, sir."

"I shall not forget you."

Once more alone, he hastened to a window and dashed aside the draperies, the better to secure the sickly light that filtered in.

"She has set my soul on fire!" he panted. "O Romaine, Romaine, it had been wiser to let me live out my allotted time and die in my enforced resignation!"

Then his eyes fled over the lines which Romaine had penned, and which ran as follows:

"My dream is dispelled. I have awakened to the reality. God help me! Was it His will that I should have met you in the eleventh hour? To what purpose? Why could I not have slept on, even unto the end? I have been roused too late. In one hour I shall be a wife; and, with God's help I will prove myself worthy the name. But—O my friend, why should I have fallen the prey of such an inscrutable fate? You have said that some day we shall know. Your words will comfort me and give me strength to bear my burden without repining. I shall try to sleep and dream again, for such is my only refuge. God be with you."

He crushed the sheet within his palms, while the panoplies about the apartment rang with his exultant cry:

"She loves me! Thank God, it is not too late for righteous interference so long as she remains a wife in name only! There are hours between this and night, and all I ask is minutes in which to accomplish her salvation! Come what may, I will go to her!"

Meanwhile, Morton and his bride had sped over the intervening distance and found themselves safely housed against the storm in his renovated mansion in the city. Blinds and draperies had been raised to admit such light as there was; rare exotics spent their fragrance upon the genial air; and a repast of exceeding daintiness had been spread for their refreshment. Everything had been done which a refined forethought could suggest—in a word, the cage had been exquisitely gilded, and was in all respects worthy of the bird.

Beneath the mystic spell of his presence, Romaine had recovered her composure, and appeared to all intents and purposes her happiest self. Like a pair of joyous children they wandered from room to room, admiring the new splendors; and thus, in due course, they entered the apartment where, enthroned above the mantel and garlanded with pale blush roses, hung the portrait of Paula. Morton led his wife to a point of vantage, and bid her look upward, riveting his eyes upon her face the while with a hungry longing.

Before the blonde loveliness of the Saxon girl, Romaine paled, while a shudder rent her from head to foot. She sighed heavily, and turned to Morton with a piteous gesture.

"My dear Loyd," she murmured sadly, "never again call me Paula."

He recoiled from her as though each innocent word had stung him to the quick.

"My God!" he cried, "if I thought—" when he checked himself before her look of abject terror, came to her, and took her in his arms. "My darling," he faltered, "if you only knew what agony the mere suspicion of your doubt causes me, you would have pity upon me!"

He spoke with such suppressed passion, with such wild anguish in his haggard eyes, that her alarm faded to helpless amazement.

"I have expressed no doubt," she murmured; "what can you mean?"

"Oh, I do not know," he moaned. "Perhaps I am not quite myself; all the happiness of this day has unnerved me. But—but you bid me never to call you Paula again; what do you mean?"

"Why, simply that I am so inferior to her in loveliness," she answered with a flurried smile.

"Did I ask, did I expect, you to look like her?" he demanded fiercely. "Can you not understand that the flesh is dust, and to dust returns; but the soul is immortal? Paula's body is dust, but her immortal soul lives—lives, not in the realms of bliss to which it fled, released, but—where does it live to-day, at this very instant? I want to hear you tell me!"

He caught her delicate shoulders between his strong white hands and glared like some ravenous animal into her startled face.

"Answer me!" he commanded.

"O Loyd," she wailed, "how wildly you speak! How can I tell where her soul may be, since I can see no reason why it should not be in heaven!"

"If it is in heaven," he cried, thrusting her violently from him, "then am I in hell!"

With a stifled cry, poor Romaine staggered to a chair and sank upon it, overcome by the conviction that she had allied herself to a madman.

And in the ominous pause that ensued, a light rap sounded upon the closed door.

With a muttered ejaculation Morton pulled himself together and went to inquire into the untimely intrusion. Upon opening the door, he found his man upon the threshold, stammering some words of apology, which were summarily cut short.

"What do you want?" Morton demanded sternly.

"There is a lady in the office, sir."

"Where are your wits, that you have forgotten your orders? I am not at home to patients."

"But she has called repeatedly, sir."

"Send her to Doctor Chalmers, my colleague."

"She declares that she will not leave without seeing you. Here is her card."

The sight of that graven name seemed for an instant to petrify the beholder, and several seconds elapsed ere he was able to command himself sufficiently to speak.

Going to his shrinking wife, he raised her hand and pressed it to his lips in a way that was infinitely pathetic.

"I must leave you for a moment, to attend to an urgent case," he whispered; "and while I am gone, I beseech you to pardon a love which transcends all bounds. Some day you will understand all I have suffered. Be lenient with me, for I am an object for pity!"

In the dimness of his office, which had undergone no renovation and no decoration, he found himself confronted by the tall and slender figure of a woman whom he knew full well. The veil had been raised from before the appealing beauty of the face which bore but slight traces of alteration since last he looked upon Margaret Revaleon!

His greeting was of so cordial a nature as to preclude all attempt on the part of his visitor to apologize for her intrusion.

"I am more than glad to see you, Mrs. Revaleon," he exclaimed, excitedly; "your visit is most opportune. For the past week you have been omnipresent in my thoughts. Who shall say that I am not developing something of your own peculiar clairvoyance?"

"I trust not," she said, regarding the speaker with apparent uneasiness.

But he continued, with precipitate heedlessness,

"And how do you find yourself since last we met?"

"My condition remains unchanged," replied the woman. "Indeed, I am satisfied that I have developed into what is popularly known as a spiritualistic medium. But I am wretched at the thought of being the unwilling possessor of this so-called odyllic power; and I have come to you again to beseech you to treat me for a malady which I am convinced you can cure if you will."

Yielding to his adroit guidance, Margaret Revaleon found herself once more seated in the luxurious patient's chair, while the young doctor seated himself before her with his back to the light.

Thus advantageously placed, he replied with a smile,

"Indeed, my dear madam, you overestimate my ability. I do not profess electro-biology. In order to do so, I should be obliged to enter upon an exhaustive course of reading of Reichenbach and his disciples. In point of fact, I have no sympathy with the believers in mesmerism and its concomitant fancies."

"No?" she answered dreamily, that singular absence of inspection dulling her tawny eyes. "Do you know, doctor, that I am impressed to tell you that you are possessed of the mesmeric power to an extraordinary degree?"

He winced consciously, but rejoined soothingly, doing his utmost to increase the stupor which was fast gaining command of his visitor,

"It may be as you say; it is certainly a power second only to your own. What else have you to impart? Anything that you might say, I should regard as oracular."

He thrilled from head to foot with a sense akin to sickening faintness, as he saw her eye-lids slowly droop while she extended her slim, white hands to him.

"Give me your hands," she murmured; "oh, dear, dear, dear! Stand back; do not crowd so! How many there are here!—Ah!"

The final word was simply an exhalation. She slumbered profoundly, breathing stertorously at first, but swiftly relapsing into perfect calm. The trance had begun. The portals of eternity seemed to be widening. The solemnity of the moment was supreme.

Morton's features became rigid as he watched; his haggard eyes started from their sockets and the drops of an icy sweat pearled upon his brow. He had longed for this moment, and yet, now that it was his, he would have given his immortal soul to have been able to play the coward and escape the consequences.

In fact he did withdraw his hands from the slight grasp, but in the next moment he was held spell-bound, for Margaret Revaleon was speaking in that weirdly vaticinal tone.

"Poor Romaine! Where is she?"

"Who speaks? Who are you?" gasped Morton, once more grasping the outstretched hands.

"Her father. You should know me. I am Sidney—Sidney—"

"Sidney Effingham!"

"Yes, and I am called back to earth in spite of myself. There is trouble here among those I dearly love, and I am pained, disturbed in my happiness."

"Your widow and son are well," murmured Morton, profoundly awed by the impressive tone of the presence.

"Yes, yes; but Romaine! my daughter, where is she? She is no longer with her mother."

"Of course she is not!" exclaimed Morton; "is she not with you in heaven?"

The violence of the query appeared to disturb the medium; her eyelids fluttered and her breathing became labored, as though the conditions of the trance had been deranged. Presently, however, the transient agitation subsided and a name escaped her lips.

"Loyd!"

"Who speaks?" whispered Morton, vaguely conscious of a change of personality.

"How can you ask? Can you not guess?"

"No!" he cried wildly; "O God! I do not dare to guess, even to think! In heaven's name, do not tell me who you may be! and—and yet I must know! I am resolved to dare death itself to be satisfied! Who is it that speaks?"

"Paula, your wife—and I am waiting!"

The listening air seemed to cringe before the maddened shriek that filled the house.

Morton struggled to his feet and for a moment hovered above the quiescent figure beneath him with hands outstretched and hooked like the talons of a bird of prey; then with a groan he sank back into his chair; his arms fell like plummets at his sides and his head dropped forward upon his breast.

Meanwhile, in the luxurious chamber over which presided the radiant portrait of the dead, garlanded in roses, the unhappy bride paced to and fro, now wringing her delicate hands, and again dashing the terrified tears from her eyes. Each moment but served to increase her helpless alarm; she knew her husband's return to be immediate, at least inevitable, and yet she could not support the thought of his advent. In a word, the last shackle which bound her soul in mystic spell had fallen away, and she was herself again. It had required weeks to right the disordered brain and give it the strength requisite to battle with the mesmeric power of its master; but at last, late as it was, her mind had fully regained its normal functions.

In the midst of her pitiful quandary Romaine was startled by an impetuous step outside the closed door. She recoiled to the furthest corner of the room, and stood bracing her fainting body against the wall.

Contrary to her expectation it was Colston Drummond who flung wide the door and stood before her.

The revulsion of feeling well-nigh overpowered her, yet in some way she was able to demand, in answer to his passionate utterance of her name,

"Why are you here?"

"To protect you, Romaine."

"You forget that I can claim a husband's protection," she retorted valiantly.

"It is from him that I seek to protect you," Drummond exclaimed; "you should not have written to me as you did, should not have laid bare your tortured heart and revealed the secret which I have had every reason to suspect, which my great love for you divined long, long ago, if you did not wish me to fly to your rescue!"

She held up beseeching hands, as though she would ward off that which she would welcome, and cried piteously,

"Too late! It is too late!"

Whatever he might have said remained unuttered, since at the moment that frenzied cry reached their ears, freezing their blood with its baleful import.

"Merciful heaven!" gasped Romaine; "it is Loyd's voice! Something dreadful has occurred! Oh, prove yourself my protector, and come with me! Come, quick, quick!"

In the excitement of the moment, the brooding twilight, and their unfamiliarity with the house they lost much precious time. Indeed they were only guided at last to the grim little office by the sudden opening of a door through which the figure of a woman escaped and passed them in swift flight.

And then they entered in awed silence, to find the bridegroom sitting in the gloaming of his nuptial-day with pendent arms and sunken head, lost—

THE END.