The Project Gutenberg eBook of Her evil genius

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Title: Her evil genius

or, Within love's call

Author: Adelaide Stirling

Release date: April 21, 2025 [eBook #75930]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Street & Smith, 1899

Credits: Demian Katz and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Images courtesy of the Digital Library@Villanova University.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HER EVIL GENIUS ***

NEW EAGLE SERIES NO. 1118

Her Evil Genius

By Adelaide Stirling

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1 | — | Queen Bess | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
2 | — | Ruby’s Reward | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
7 | — | Two Keys | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
9 | — | The Virginia Heiress | By May Agnes Fleming
12 | — | Edrie’s Legacy | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
17 | — | Leslie’s Loyalty | By Charles Garvice
| (His Love So True)
22 | — | Elaine | By Charles Garvice
24 | — | A Wasted Love | By Charles Garvice
| (On Love’s Altar)
41 | — | Her Heart’s Desire | By Charles Garvice
| (An Innocent Girl)
44 | — | That Dowdy | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
50 | — | Her Ransom | By Charles Garvice
| (Paid For)
55 | — | Thrice Wedded | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
66 | — | Witch Hazel | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
70 | — | Sydney | By Charles Garvice
| (A Wilful Young Woman)
73 | — | The Marquis | By Charles Garvice
77 | — | Tina | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
79 | — | Out of the Past | By Charles Garvice
| (Marjorie)
84 | — | Imogene | By Charles Garvice
| (Dumaresq’s Temptation)
85 | — | Lorrie; or, Hollow Gold | By Charles Garvice
88 | — | Virgie’s Inheritance | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
95 | — | A Wilful Maid | By Charles Garvice
| (Philippa)
98 | — | Claire | By Charles Garvice
| (The Mistress of Court Regna)
99 | — | Audrey’s Recompense | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
102 | — | Sweet Cymbeline | By Charles Garvice
| (Bellmaire)
109 | — | Signa’s Sweetheart | By Charles Garvice
| (Lord Delamere’s Bride)
111 | — | Faithful Shirley | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
117 | — | She Loved Him | By Charles Garvice
119 | — | ’Twixt Smile and Tear | By Charles Garvice
| (Dulcie)
122 | — | Grazia’s Mistake | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
130 | — | A Passion Flower | By Charles Garvice
| (Madge)
133 | — | Max | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
136 | — | The Unseen Bridegroom | By May Agnes Fleming
138 | — | A Fatal Wooing | By Laura Jean Libbey
141 | — | Lady Evelyn | By May Agnes Fleming
144 | — | Dorothy’s Jewels | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
146 | — | Magdalen’s Vow | By May Agnes Fleming
151 | — | The Heiress of Glen Gower | By May Agnes Fleming
155 | — | Nameless Dell | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
157 | — | Who Wins | By May Agnes Fleming
166 | — | The Masked Bridal | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
168 | — | Thrice Lost, Thrice Won | By May Agnes Fleming
174 | — | His Guardian Angel | By Charles Garvice
177 | — | A True Aristocrat | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
181 | — | The Baronet’s Bride | By May Agnes Fleming
188 | — | Dorothy Arnold’s Escape | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
199 | — | Geoffrey’s Victory | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
203 | — | Only One Love | By Charles Garvice
210 | — | Wild Oats | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
213 | — | The Heiress of Egremont | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
215 | — | Only a Girl’s Love | By Charles Garvice
219 | — | Lost: A Pearle | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
222 | — | The Lily of Mordaunt | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
223 | — | Leola Dale’s Fortune | By Charles Garvice
231 | — | The Earl’s Heir | By Charles Garvice
| (Lady Norah)
233 | — | Nora | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
236 | — | Her Humble Lover | By Charles Garvice
| (The Usurper; or, The Gipsy Peer)
242 | — | A Wounded Heart | By Charles Garvice
| (Sweet as a Rose)
244 | — | A Hoiden’s Conquest | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
250 | — | A Woman’s Soul | By Charles Garvice
| (Doris; or, Behind the Footlights)
255 | — | The Little Marplot | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
257 | — | A Martyred Love | By Charles Garvice
| (Iris; or, Under the Shadows)
266 | — | The Welfleet Mystery | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
267 | — | Jeanne | By Charles Garvice
| (Barriers Between)
268 | — | Olivia; or, It Was for Her Sake | By Charles Garvice
272 | — | So Fair, So False | By Charles Garvice
| (The Beauty of the Season)
276 | — | So Nearly Lost | By Charles Garvice
| (The Springtime of Love)
277 | — | Brownie’s Triumph | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
280 | — | Love’s Dilemma | By Charles Garvice
| (For an Earldom)
282 | — | The Forsaken Bride | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
283 | — | My Lady Pride | By Charles Garvice
| (Floris)
287 | — | The Lady of Darracourt | By Charles Garvice
288 | — | Sibyl’s Influence | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
291 | — | A Mysterious Wedding Ring | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
292 | — | For Her Only | By Charles Garvice
| (Diana)
296 | — | The Heir of Vering | By Charles Garvice
299 | — | Little Miss Whirlwind | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
300 | — | The Spider and the Fly | By Charles Garvice
| (Violet)
303 | — | The Queen of the Isle | By May Agnes Fleming
304 | — | Stanch as a Woman | By Charles Garvice
| (A Maiden’s Sacrifice)
305 | — | Led by Love | By Charles Garvice
| Sequel to “Stanch as a Woman”
309 | — | The Heiress of Castle Cliffs | By May Agnes Fleming
312 | — | Woven on Fate’s Loom, and The Snowdrift | By Charles Garvice
315 | — | The Dark Secret | By May Agnes Fleming
317 | — | Ione | By Laura Jean Libbey
| (Adrien Le Roy)
318 | — | Stanch of Heart | By Charles Garvice
322 | — | Mildred | By Mrs. Mary J. Holmes
326 | — | Parted by Fate | By Laura Jean Libbey
327 | — | He Loves Me | By Charles Garvice
328 | — | He Loves Me Not | By Charles Garvice
330 | — | Aikenside | By Mrs. Mary J. Holmes
333 | — | Stella’s Fortune | By Charles Garvice
| (The Sculptor’s Wooing)
334 | — | Miss McDonald | By Mrs. Mary J. Holmes
339 | — | His Heart’s Queen | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
340 | — | Bad Hugh. Vol. I. | By Mrs. Mary J. Holmes
341 | — | Bad Hugh. Vol. II. | By Mrs. Mary J. Holmes
344 | — | Tresillian Court | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
345 | — | The Scorned Wife | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
346 | — | Guy Tresillian’s Fate | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
347 | — | The Eyes of Love | By Charles Garvice
348 | — | The Hearts of Youth | By Charles Garvice
351 | — | The Churchyard Betrothal | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
352 | — | Family Pride. Vol. I. | By Mary J. Holmes
353 | — | Family Pride. Vol. II. | By Mary J. Holmes
354 | — | A Love Comedy | By Charles Garvice
360 | — | The Ashes of Love | By Charles Garvice
361 | — | A Heart Triumphant | By Charles Garvice
367 | — | The Pride of Her Life | By Charles Garvice
368 | — | Won By Love’s Valor | By Charles Garvice
372 | — | A Girl in a Thousand | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
373 | — | A Thorn Among Roses | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
| Sequel to “A Girl in a Thousand”
380 | — | Her Double Life | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
381 | — | The Sunshine of Love | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
| Sequel to “Her Double Life”
382 | — | Mona | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
391 | — | Marguerite’s Heritage | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
399 | — | Betsey’s Transformation | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
407 | — | Esther, the Fright | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
415 | — | Trixy | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
440 | — | Edna’s Secret Marriage | By Charles Garvice
449 | — | The Bailiff’s Scheme | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
450 | — | Rosamond’s Love | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
| Sequel to “The Bailiff’s Scheme”
451 | — | Helen’s Victory | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
456 | — | A Vixen’s Treachery | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
457 | — | Adrift in the World | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
| Sequel to “A Vixen’s Treachery”
458 | — | When Love Meets Love | By Charles Garvice
464 | — | The Old Life’s Shadows | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
465 | — | Outside Her Eden | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
| Sequel to “The Old Life’s Shadows”
474 | — | The Belle of the Season | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
475 | — | Love Before Pride | By Mrs. Harriet Lewis
| Sequel to “The Belle of the Season”
481 | — | Wedded, Yet No Wife | By May Agnes Fleming
489 | — | Lucy Harding | By Mrs. Mary J. Holmes
495 | — | Norine’s Revenge | By May Agnes Fleming
511 | — | The Golden Key | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
512 | — | A Heritage of Love | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
| Sequel to “The Golden Key”
519 | — | The Magic Cameo | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
520 | — | The Heatherford Fortune | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
| Sequel to “The Magic Cameo”
525 | — | Sweet Kitty Clover | By Laura Jean Libbey
531 | — | Better Than Life | By Charles Garvice
534 | — | Lotta, the Cloak Model | By Laura Jean Libbey
542 | — | Once in a Life | By Charles Garvice
543 | — | The Veiled Bride | By Laura Jean Libbey
548 | — | ’Twas Love’s Fault | By Charles Garvice
551 | — | Pity—Not Love | By Laura Jean Libbey
553 | — | Queen Kate | By Charles Garvice
554 | — | Step by Step | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
557 | — | In Cupid’s Chains | By Charles Garvice
630 | — | The Verdict of the Heart | By Charles Garvice
635 | — | A Coronet of Shame | By Charles Garvice
640 | — | A Girl of Spirit | By Charles Garvice
645 | — | A Jest of Fate | By Charles Garvice
648 | — | Gertrude Elliott’s Crucible | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
650 | — | Diana’s Destiny | By Charles Garvice
655 | — | Linked by Fate | By Charles Garvice
663 | — | Creatures of Destiny | By Charles Garvice
671 | — | When Love Is Young | By Charles Garvice
676 | — | My Lady Beth | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
679 | — | Gold in the Gutter | By Charles Garvice
712 | — | Love and a Lie | By Charles Garvice
721 | — | A Girl from the South | By Charles Garvice
730 | — | John Hungerford’s Redemption | By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
741 | — | The Fatal Ruby | By Charles Garvice
749 | — | The Heart of a Maid | By Charles Garvice
758 | — | The Woman in It | By Charles Garvice
774 | — | Love in a Snare | By Charles Garvice
775 | — | My Love Kitty | By Charles Garvice
776 | — | That Strange Girl | By Charles Garvice
777 | — | Nellie | By Charles Garvice
778 | — | Miss Estcourt; or Olive | By Charles Garvice
818 | — | The Girl Who Was True | By Charles Garvice
826 | — | The Irony of Love | By Charles Garvice
896 | — | A Terrible Secret | By May Agnes Fleming
897 | — | When To-morrow Came | By May Agnes Fleming
904 | — | A Mad Marriage | By May Agnes Fleming
905 | — | A Woman Without Mercy | By May Agnes Fleming
912 | — | One Night’s Mystery | By May Agnes Fleming
913 | — | The Cost of a Lie | By May Agnes Fleming
920 | — | Silent and True | By May Agnes Fleming
921 | — | A Treasure Lost | By May Agnes Fleming
925 | — | Forrest House | By Mary J. Holmes
926 | — | He Loved Her Once | By Mary J. Holmes
930 | — | Kate Danton | By May Agnes Fleming
931 | — | Proud as a Queen | By May Agnes Fleming
935 | — | Queenie Hetherton | By Mary J. Holmes
936 | — | Mightier Than Pride | By Mary J. Holmes
940 | — | The Heir of Charlton | By May Agnes Fleming
941 | — | While Love Stood Waiting | By May Agnes Fleming
945 | — | Gretchen | By Mary J. Holmes
946 | — | Beauty That Faded | By Mary J. Holmes
950 | — | Carried by Storm | By May Agnes Fleming
951 | — | Love’s Dazzling Glitter | By May Agnes Fleming
954 | — | Marguerite | By Mary J. Holmes
955 | — | When Love Spurs Onward | By Mary J. Holmes
960 | — | Lost for a Woman | By May Agnes Fleming
961 | — | His to Love or Hate | By May Agnes Fleming
964 | — | Paul Ralston’s First Love | By Mary J. Holmes
965 | — | Where Love’s Shadows Lie Deep | By Mary J. Holmes
968 | — | The Tracy Diamonds | By Mary J. Holmes
969 | — | She Loved Another | By Mary J. Holmes
972 | — | The Cromptons | By Mary J. Holmes
973 | — | Her Husband Was a Scamp | By Mary J. Holmes
975 | — | The Merivale Banks | By Mary J. Holmes
978 | — | The One Girl in the World | By Charles Garvice
979 | — | His Priceless Jewel | By Charles Garvice
982 | — | The Millionaire’s Daughter and Other Stories | By Charles Garvice
983 | — | Doctor Hathern’s Daughters | By Mary J. Holmes
984 | — | The Colonel’s Bride | By Mary J. Holmes
988 | — | Her Ladyship’s Diamonds, and Other Stories | By Charles Garvice
998 | — | Sharing Her Crime | By May Agnes Fleming
999 | — | The Heiress of Sunset Hall | By May Agnes Fleming
1004 | — | Maude Percy’s Secret | By May Agnes Fleming
1005 | — | The Adopted Daughter | By May Agnes Fleming
1010 | — | The Sisters of Torwood | By May Agnes Fleming
1015 | — | A Changed Heart | By May Agnes Fleming
1016 | — | Enchanted | By May Agnes Fleming
1025 | — | A Wife’s Tragedy | By May Agnes Fleming
1026 | — | Brought to Reckoning | By May Agnes Fleming
1027 | — | A Madcap Sweetheart | By Emma Garrison Jones
1028 | — | An Unhappy Bargain | By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
1029 | — | Only a Working Girl | By Geraldine Fleming
1030 | — | The Unbidden Guest | By Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
1031 | — | The Man and His Millions | By Ida Reade Allen
1032 | — | Mabel’s Sacrifice | By Charlotte M. Stanley
1033 | — | Was He Worth It? | By Geraldine Fleming
1034 | — | Her Two Suitors | By Wenona Gilman
1035 | — | Edith Percival | By May Agnes Fleming
1036 | — | Caught in the Snare | By May Agnes Fleming
1037 | — | A Love Concealed | By Emma Garrison Jones
1038 | — | The Price of Happiness | By Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
1039 | — | The Lucky Man | By Geraldine Fleming
1040 | — | A Forced Promise | By Ida Reade Allen
1041 | — | The Crime of Love | By Barbara Howard
1042 | — | The Bride’s Opals | By Emma Garrison Jones
1043 | — | Love That Was Cursed | By Geraldine Fleming

HER EVIL GENIUS;

OR,

Within Love’s Call

BY

ADELAIDE STIRLING

Author of “A Forgotten Love,” “Love and Spite,”
“A Sacrifice to Love,” etc.

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

Copyright, 1899
By STREET & SMITH

Her Evil Genius

(Printed in the United States of America)

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian.

HER EVIL GENIUS.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. THE CONVENT PRELUDE.
CHAPTER II. A FRIENDLESS FUGITIVE.
CHAPTER III. THE WHEELS OF FATE.
CHAPTER IV. THE LOVELY ANDRIA.
CHAPTER V. HER EVIL GENIUS.
CHAPTER VI. LORD ERCELDONNE MARKS THE KING.
CHAPTER VII. FIRST BLOOD TO ERCELDONNE.
CHAPTER VIII. A WOMAN’S DIARY.
CHAPTER IX. ON BOARD THE YACHT.
CHAPTER X. THE HOUSE BY THE SEA.
CHAPTER XI. TWO WARNINGS.
CHAPTER XII. THE HAUNTING EYES.
CHAPTER XIII. THE PATTERING FOOTSTEPS.
CHAPTER XIV. THE EYES OUTSIDE THE JALOUSY.
CHAPTER XV. A STRANGE POWER.
CHAPTER XVI. IN THE WOODS OF PARADISE.
CHAPTER XVII. OLD SINS AWAKENED.
CHAPTER XVIII. DOUBTING THOMAS.
CHAPTER XIX. TRUSTED TOO LATE.
CHAPTER XX. AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL.
CHAPTER XXI. STRANGERS.
CHAPTER XXII. BEHIND THE CYPRESS BOUGHS.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE CRY IN THE STARLIGHT.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE MADMAN.
CHAPTER XXV. THE LAUGH IN THE DARK.
CHAPTER XXVI. A SEALED PACKET.
CHAPTER XXVII. THE HAND OF FATE.
CHAPTER XXVIII. A MURDER IN THE DARK.
CHAPTER XXIX. THE DEATH-TRAP.
CHAPTER XXX. MOTHER FELICITAS.
CHAPTER XXXI. HOPELESS AND HELPLESS.
CHAPTER XXXII. AN OLD PHOTOGRAPH.
CHAPTER XXXIII. A DREAM OF VENGEANCE.
CHAPTER XXXIV. A LITTLE GOLD.
CHAPTER XXXV. THE BEGINNING OF THE JUDGMENT.
CHAPTER XXXVI. “A BOY!”
CHAPTER XXXVII. THE DARK HOUSE.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. DREAMS.
CHAPTER XXXIX. TAKEN UNAWARES.
CHAPTER XL. THE EXPIATION OF MOTHER FELICITAS.

CHAPTER I.

THE CONVENT PRELUDE.

The summer holidays had begun and the great convent school was deserted, all its pupils gone but two, who were in the alcove belonging to the elder of them, and, as if that breakage of rule were not enough, were seated on the small white bed which was counted a crime to rumple.

The elder girl was eighteen, and after to-day convent rules would concern her no more, for that very afternoon she was going out into “the world” to earn her own living as a governess. She was wild with excitement, and would have been enraptured with the foretaste of liberty had it not been for the child who clung to her, sick and exhausted with stormy crying.

She looked down on her pityingly, and the reverend mother could have told you Andria Heathcote was not given to compassion. Her red-brown hair grew too strongly on her forehead for that; her full rose lips were too heavy. Yet something in the very strangeness of the girl who clutched her had caught at her hard young heart.

For Beryl Corselas was only a child, and young for her years at that. It seemed to Andria that the sins of eleven years old were too seriously taken when they were considered crimes, and yet her goblin ways were enough to provoke a saint—or Sister Felicitas!

“Beryl, look here,” repeated Andria; “don’t cry any more. I’ll write to you. I’m not going very far away.”

The child lifted her face from the girl’s shoulder. It was a curious face, with something almost vacant about it, yet what the lack was no one could quite say. She had extraordinary eyes, strangely and uncannily beautiful, so light a brown as to be almost yellow, tawny golden under the heavy eyelashes, that were black as ink. The warm whiteness of her cheeks was blurred with crying, paled with real despair, and the startling crimson of the childish lips had been hard bitten to check the sobs that might be heard.

She pushed away the long cloud of straight hair that was not black nor brown, but dusky, a cloud of darkness with no color to be named, from her face, and spoke with sullen, unchildlike contempt.

“You won’t write!” Her eyes were like burned-out coals. “You’ll mean to, but you won’t. You’re always trying to save other people’s feelings outside, but inside you never care. You’ll forget!”

“I’ll try not to,” said Andria, with a sudden pang. Was she really what Beryl said? Did her hatred of giving pain really make her more cruel in the end? She kissed the wet cheek.

“If I do forget, if I am like that, will you promise me something? Remember that I don’t mean to forget, and that I don’t, really. Think to yourself it’s just my way, and that some day you’ll see me again. Will you try, Beryl?”

“It’s no use my trying anything without you—in the house with Sister Felicitas!”

“Keep out of her way, then! Why are you always getting into her black books?”

“Because she hates me. I’m never myself with her.”

“You are with Mother Benedicta!”

“I might as well be comfortable with the statue in the chapel! I see about as much of her.”

She clung suddenly to the arm that enwrapped her.

“Oh, it’s you I want—you!” she gasped. “If I’m going to be good it will be for you. Who else do I like? Just you and animals—and I haven’t any of them except my rabbits. And I hate, hate, hate Sister Felicitas!”

A shadow, tall, slight, and angular, fell on them.

Andria looked up with a start, since convent tradition was still strong in her, and she was breaking rules openly. Sister Felicitas stood in the doorway, black against the sunlit passage.

“You’ve no right to be here, Beryl Corselas,” her voice seemed to float out into the shaded whiteness of the alcove, calm and cool as frost. “Go away and do your weeding. Your garden is not a pretty sight.”

Andria felt the quick shudder in the child’s body.

“Please, sister,” she said, “let me stay. Andria is going away.”

“I have nothing to do with that. But while I am in charge of the kitchen-garden you must do your share there. Go at once,” she said very softly, but the downcast eyes were angry. Andria Heathcote could not be reprimanded, and Sister Felicitas longed to do it; she was always making that hateful child rebel against lawful authority. But to-morrow she would be gone.

“A few minutes more or less cannot matter to you. Go to your weeding,” she said scornfully.

Beryl Corselas sat up, her slim, childish body quivering.

“I won’t go!” her voice low and passionate. “You know there are no weeds for me to dig up. I hate gardens. I wish everything in yours would die, or else choke you when you ate it—nasty, nasty old onions!” she cried, in a transport of temper.

“Beryl!” Even Andria, who hated Sister Felicitas, was aghast.

“You can do your weeding or not, that is for you to say,” said Sister Felicitas, whose face was quite untroubled, but she was trilling her fingers against her black habit. “But it is for me to say what will happen to you if you disobey.”

“I don’t care what you do to me!”

“No?” Andria knew that far-off sound in Sister Felicitas’ voice; there was not a girl in the convent whose nerves did not twitch when she heard it. “Then I suppose I can send those rabbits of yours to market! It will be time for rabbit-soup soon.”

“No, no, no!” The child’s voice was dreadful in its wild scream of supplication. If there had been any one in the empty corridor they must have hurried to the sound of it.

“Not my bunnies. I love them. They’re truly people. You—you couldn’t be so wicked!”

“If you can talk such nonsense about your rabbits, the sooner they are gone the better,” said Sister Felicitas icily. “No—get up, child! You will tear my habit.”

For Beryl Corselas was on the floor, clutching at the immaculate black folds of the sister’s robe.

“You won’t take them away—say you won’t, sister!” She paid no attention to the hand that tried to disengage hers. “I’ll do anything, I’ll work in the garden, I’ll say I’m sorry——” The miserable voice made a listener start, but Sister Felicitas only drew her skirts away deftly.

“That you will be obliged to do,” she said.

“I’ll beg your pardon now,” sobbed Beryl, “only please don’t send my rabbits to market! I’ll go and weed—I truly will.”

“You make an idol of senseless things. You will be better without them.” In “the world” the tone would have been called cruel.

The child jumped to her feet, her wild, dusky hair streaming, her face white and furious.

“If you take them away I’ll kill you!” she cried out, shaking and gasping. “I hate you! You make me wicked, and then punish me. I——” She stopped as if something had turned her to stone.

In the doorway stood the reverend mother. Mother Benedicta, who had never been known to visit an alcove, who was high above the girls and their rulers, was in front of her, a gracious, stately figure in her black habit and white bands. There was a curious look on her beautiful, placid face, enough to stop the tongue even of Beryl Corselas in a temper. Yet she was not looking at the child, but at Sister Felicitas.

“I think breaking rules and sorrow at Andria’s going has made some one a little hysterical this morning! Is that it, Beryl? Come to me, my child;” and she put an arm round the sinner, who stood petrified, as if at the sight of a saint from heaven. Mother Benedicta’s cool fingers felt the hot throbbing of the child’s lax hands, and her face grew sterner.

“You are sorry for your rudeness to the good sister, is it not so, Beryl? Yes!” at the dumb nod that was a lie of despair. “I will see to the child, then, sister. I know you are busy. Sister Ignatia is waiting for you. She needs your help.”

Sister Felicitas’ face grew white.

“Yes, reverend mother,” she returned quietly, but her face was not quiet as she left the alcove. To have Andria Heathcote incite that hideous child to mutiny was bad enough, but to have Mother Benedicta set aside her authority was worse. And there had been that in the face of the reverend mother that told Sister Felicitas that even rancorous hatred must go softly.

“Reverend mother, my rabbits!” gasped the culprit, as the sister’s steps died away. “You won’t let her take them?”

“It was not meant, Beryl! The good sister thought to touch your heart; that is a hard little heart, is it not?” she said, smiling. “But run away now and wash your face. Then you can go to my room and wait there quietly till Andria and I come to you. I will ask Sister Felicitas to let her onions wait for to-day.”

But there was no smile on her face as the child slipped away, radiant with gratitude.

“It was a pity you had her here, Andria!” she said. “But it is the holidays, after all—only it provokes Sister Felicitas, who is always so conscientious.”

Andria Heathcote was brave enough, but, as a child had been quick to see, she was too apt to let things go, to put a good face on ugly matters. Yet now that curious politeness of hers left her.

“You heard, reverend mother,” she said quickly. “That goes on all day long. The child is growing sullen and strange.”

“Do you mean that, Andria?” Mother Benedicta was not apt to talk so freely, but Andria was going away.

“Yes, reverend mother! I knew you did not know. And it is true”—flushing at her own boldness—“that the sister dislikes Beryl.”

Mother Benedicta sighed.

“The child is difficult, they tell me, and incorrigibly idle;” but she said it chiefly to hear the answer.

“She can speak Spanish, and she works hard at that, though no one knows but Sister De Sales. School is bad for her; the girls bully her. Could you not send her home sometimes, dear mother?”

“She has no home; did you not know? She has been here since she was a baby. We do not even know who she is.” For once the Mother Superior had forgotten herself.

“Sister Felicitas knows,” said Andria quietly.

“What! Why do you say that?”

“Because”—once launched, Andria was floating well—“I heard her tell the child that she came by her mad temper honestly—was her mother over again.”

Mother Benedicta stood dumb.

She had heard more than she liked of Sister Felicitas’ methods this morning, but this passed all bearing.

“You must be mistaken,” she said, for the honor of the convent, but Andria saw her breathing quicken. “But I have been wrong. After this I will see more of the child. I promise you that much.”

To think of Sister Felicitas having known all this time the parentage of Beryl Corselas, which had been the mystery of the quiet convent lives, was too much even for her charity. It seemed but yesterday since a woman, wild, despairing, with the hand of death already on her, had brought the child to the convent. She had been told that no baby of three years could be taken, and had sunk into the nearest chair as if her last hope were gone.

Mother Benedicta had pitied her, seeing her so ill. (Afterward she had altered her mind about the illness; it might easily have been furious disappointment that had sapped her strange visitor’s strength.) She left the room to tell a lay sister to bring wine and food, but, though she was absent only a minute, when she returned the woman was gone. The window was open on the garden, and in the room sat a pale, yellow-eyed child, in exquisite clothing that was marked “Beryl Corselas.”

That was all. Never from that day to this had they been able to find out anything more, and only that the convent charter provided for certain charity pupils could the rules have been stretched to keep the waif.

Yet kept she was, and now a curious thrill made the superior tremble. Yet it was impossible. It had been six months before Sister Felicitas joined the community, and the woman who had flung the child on their charity had been pink-cheeked, golden-haired. Sister Felicitas was pale and dark. And still the Mother Superior—— She forced herself to speak.

“I do not know what is to become of the child,” she said. “As you say, she is very strange. I never hear any good of her.”

“There is good in her. But Sister Felicitas has a repulsion for the child. You can see it.”

“I hope not,” said the good woman; but her own thoughts frightened her. “You had better write to her, Andria. I will see she gets your letters.”

She had quite forgotten the reason that had brought her to Andria Heathcote’s alcove in this sudden suspicion that had sprung up. She looked unseeingly at the girl who had spoken out against all her secretive nature. Yet Andria’s was not an ordinary face, and worth the watching.

Cleverness and self-reliance were written on the forehead, from which the hair was brushed back convent fashion; cleverness again in the wide eyebrows; perfect bravery was in the full-lipped mouth, and dogged patience in the clean chin; but the warm blue eyes had a veiled something in them that told of reluctance to speak out, of a temper that would hold out a right hand to an enemy and stab effectually with the left. Not from treachery, but because things were more easily done in that manner.

Mother Benedicta had meant to speak of these things, but she turned away with only one sentence as she signed to the girl to follow her.

“You will have to fight your own battles, Andria,” she said, almost absently. “Do it well and openly, as you fought Beryl’s to-day. And do not forget that this convent life has been but the prelude to your warfare.”

Andria bowed her head for the blessing that followed. She thought the reverend mother looked strangely old and worn to-day.

CHAPTER II.

A FRIENDLESS FUGITIVE.

Mother Benedicta, careful of many things, had meant to add the mystery of Beryl Corselas to her burden, but fate was stronger than she, who had been for so many years the capable head of the community.

Two days after Andria’s departure, death had called her very quietly. Unanointed, unshriven, and with the questions she had meant to ask Sister Felicitas yet unspoken, the good mother had followed the beaten pathway the saints have left toward heaven.

It was Sister Felicitas who found her dead in her bed, but it was not prayer for the superior’s soul that sent the sister to her knees, but utter thankfulness that a stumbling-block was gone from her path. Beryl Corselas heard the news in stony silence. Only once had the reverend mother ever noticed her; and yet she felt alone. Andria, though the weeks went by, never wrote, just as the child had prophesied; for with all her unchildlike wisdom she never thought that it was Sister Felicitas who opened the letters now, and that Andria’s promise was well kept for a year.

After that year perhaps she dared not write to the convent—who shall say? But her letters ceased. And Sister Felicitas rose steadily in the community, till five years after Mother Benedicta’s death she had been made Mother Superior.

Only Beryl Corselas knew what the story of those five years had been. Years of injustice, of petty tortures—Mother Benedicta was not cold in her grave before the rabbits were killed by the cook before the very eyes of their shrieking, fainting owner—years of slow warping of a child’s spirit till, now a girl of sixteen, she was deceitful from fear, silent from sullen hopelessness, and almost ugly from misery.

She sat alone in an empty class-room, where her face was but a white spot in the growing dusk of evening. The heavy lids drooped over her tearless eyes; she was past crying now, as she was past all childish things. Mother Benedicta would have turned in her grave had she seen how those years of pain had changed the child’s looks, how tall and ill-nourished she was in her out-grown convent uniform. Sister Felicitas punished by depriving the growing girl of proper food; she was under sentence now where she sat in the empty class-room, and heard the clatter of other hungry girls in the refectory. And hunger—and something else—was making her as dangerous as a wild beast.

“If I don’t get out of this I’ll kill her!” she thought, clasping and unclasping her strong young hands. “And I know she doesn’t mean me ever to get out. She means to make me a nun, and it’s no use my telling Father Parker I’ve no vocation, for he’s deaf, and never hears what I say. She can take her time and yell at him. If I shout in the confessional I only get punished. The other nuns would stand up for me—some of them. But, though this might keep me from being made a novice, they couldn’t keep me from being made a lay sister; for it’s in the charter that charity girls must pay the convent back for their keep, somehow. And she’ll never let me go out into the world to do it. I—I’d be willing to starve if I could only get away!”

She got up and went to the window, heedless of bumps against the empty forms. But outside there was nothing to see but a November garden, cold and barren, and a homeless cat, crossing it furtively.

The girl watched the miserable creature with the painful sympathy she felt for all animals. In the dusk she saw it leap nimbly to the top of the high wall and disappear. The convent rebel did not even know what was on the other side of that wall; but she knew too well what was on this side. A lay sister’s life, spent in the kitchens; in scrubbing and killing fowls. She shuddered. And Mother Felicitas’ eye was always on her; always with the same threat, the same malice.

She peered into the twilight. The stray cat was gone. Beryl Corselas stretched her young body, stiff with long sitting, just as the cat itself might have done before it started on its furtive journey. But when a sad-eyed nun came and let her out of the locked class-room her face was as sullenly vacant as usual. There was no one, not even Mother Felicitas, full of self-conceit at her realized ambition, to know that the girl’s pulses were playing a wild tune that night, and that the childhood that had sat so strangely on her had fallen from her like a garment.

Unnoticed, Beryl slipped up to bed before the other charity pupil; and undressed in their joint alcove. Pale and too slender in her white cotton nightgown, she passed under the white sheet that separated her cubicle from the next. It belonged to a rich West Indian girl, and in a box on the table were sovereigns, as she had known there would be. Without a pang of hesitation Beryl Corselas took two in the glimmer of the floating night-light. Then she lifted the sheet and slipped under it, back to her own alcove, just in time. As she put the coins noiselessly into her bed, the stout girl who shared the alcove came in. She whispered sharply, though talking was forbidden: “You’re to be moved to-morrow; sent to the kitchen with Sister Agnes. I wish I was you; you’ll get enough to eat. Sister Agnes is just sweet.”

Beryl raised her eyebrows significantly. The sister in charge was clapping her hands as a signal for the girls to say their evening prayers. But there were no prayers on the lips of one girl on her knees.

Would it ever be quiet? Would the tossing of the girls never cease as they twisted on their narrow beds? It seemed years to Beryl, lying motionless in hers, longing for the dead middle of the night to bring quiet breathing to the hundred sleepers round her. A wakeful devil seemed to be making his rounds among them; girl after girl turned, tossed, and coughed; not till long after midnight was the hush settled and complete, and not till then did Beryl Corselas, whose blood was thumping with suspense and determination, stir on her hard bed.

Absolutely without sound she sat upright and looked about her.

Her business would have been more easily done in the dark, but in every alcove there floated a wick in an inch of oil buoyed up in a jar full of water. In the glimmering, unearthly light the white sheets separating the alcoves seemed to stir, but she was used to that; and to have put out the dull light would have waked the heavy sleeper in the next bed.

Barefooted, Beryl slipped to the cold floor, dressed, put her stolen money in her pocket, and, shoes in hand, crept through the wide corridor between the double row of alcoves.

Even the sister in charge heard no sounds as the light step passed, and not a soul stirred in the convent as the girl stole down the wide, polished stairs in her stocking feet. In the lower flat it was dark; she was forced to keep one hand stretched out at arm’s length before her as she crept inch by inch through the silent house.

The schoolroom door creaked as she opened it, but once inside floods of moonlight made her way clear. She looked round the room, where she had sat a hungry prisoner from afternoon school till bedtime, and in her fierce exultation at leaving it forgot she was still hungry.

The window-fastening gave under her strong fingers, the sash moved easily, without noise, and, as quietly as the cat she had watched that evening, the girl dropped in the frozen grass outside. Skirting the wall she moved quickly to the very spot where the cat had crossed it, from a kind of superstition that she must climb over at no other place; and there mounted it with an effortless spring just as the other wandering thing had done.

With a laugh she slipped to the ground and put on the shoes she carried. For the cat had been a good pilot. She stood on a road that she knew led to London, and she stretched out her arms in a kind of rapture.

She was free from Mother Felicitas at last!

But a waving shadow that came suddenly before her eyes killed her hasty joy. It was only the shadow of a bare, crooked tree, but its outline was like an arm outstretched to catch her. “Beryl, you fool!” she thought. “By morning you will be caught again unless there are miles between you and the convent.”

She began to run, and not a girl in the school could run like her. Yard by yard she got over the hard road, till by daylight she found herself in the suburbs of the great city, though where she did not know. She walked on soberly till she came to a baker’s shop, and there bought a roll. There were early risers about, but no one looked at her, for her plain hat and coat were ordinary enough. Presently she grew bold enough to stop at a street coffee-stall.

The hot, strong stuff did her good, and as she paid for it she began to think coherently for the first time since she had gone to bed.

“I must have a place, and I haven’t one!” she pondered as she walked on refreshed. “If I could get to Andria I should be all right, but——” Her face grew too grim and bitter for her years. Andria had long ago forgotten her, and more pertinently still the child of five years ago had never known where the grown-up girl had gone. There was no hope in Andria. Without a friend in the world the girl walked quietly on her aimless way. Long before her absence was discovered—for her stout roommate merely thought stolidly that Beryl Corselas had got up early, and said nothing about her empty bed till breakfast-time—she was adrift like many another waif in the interminable streets of London.

CHAPTER III.

THE WHEELS OF FATE.

Two days afterward a shabby little chemist in a shabby shop on the Euston road looked carelessly at a strange customer.

A tall, big-boned girl in a frock too short for her had asked for laudanum for a toothache. She looked half-wild with pain—or despair; the chemist never thought of the latter, and he sold her some. Her face grew livid as he pushed a book toward her and requested her to sign her name. It was always done, he explained, when people bought poisons.

With a frightened hand she scrawled something, but the name was so outlandish to the man as he stood peering at it that he never noticed with what haste his customer had left the shop. She had been a fool ever to have entered it, yet in the new and dreadful knowledge that two days of London streets had crowded on her she had felt there was nothing else to do.

Perhaps her very innocence of the world had made her pass scatheless through perils she only half-realized, but that half was enough. Behind her lay the convent, and she could never go back to that; round her were the awful streets where policemen kept hurrying her on, where people passed her indifferent-eyed, or else—Beryl Corselas turned sick and faint at the thought of those other people who had not passed on.

Her money had been stolen, all but the few shillings she had put in the bodice of her frock, and when that was done, what in all the world remained to her? No one had ever liked her. She had no belief in any one’s charity, and the girl’s heart swelled as she answered her own question.

“Only just death,” she thought, fingering the little bottle of laudanum she had been forced to sign her name to get, “or Mother Felicitas—for she’ll trace me by it. Well, I’d rather die out here than live in the convent.” She had walked on aimlessly enough, and looked up to see that she was in front of the entrance to a railway-station, where people kept going in and out. With a sudden inspiration she followed a woman inside, and stood behind her at the booking-office. A train was waiting, ready to leave; on the carriage nearest her was a sign, “For Blackpool.” She knew where that was, even with her badly learned geography lessons; it was a long way off from London and Mother Felicitas.

She bought a second-class ticket, imitating the woman in front of her. At least she could rest in the train, since her tired feet would hardly carry her. She had no money at all when she had paid for her ticket, and could just manage to follow a porter and stumble into the carriage marked Blackpool.

To her joy no one else entered it, and the train started.

The cushioned carriage was rapture to her tired body, but before she stretched herself out on its scant luxury, she drained the little bottle the chemist had sold her, and threw it away. Then she curled herself up and slept; at first uneasily, with the unaccustomed sounds of the moving train in her dreams, and then heavily, as people sleep themselves to death.

There was no peace in the world for such as she, and at sixteen Beryl Corselas had found it out. She had tried to get employment, but the women at whose doors she had knocked wanted no such unearthly-looking nursemaids, and she could do nothing else. To sleep her life away was all she could do, and there would be plenty of time for that between London and Blackpool.

Remorselessly as the wheels of fate the train rolled on, and dreamlessly the girl slept.

If she had known two things she might have flung the laudanum from her like a snake. The first was that Andria Heathcote had been longing for her, yet not daring to visit her in the safe refuge of the convent. The second, that if Mother Felicitas had known that her missing pupil had gone to Blackpool she would have laughed silently, since that was the only part of England Beryl Corselas had to avoid. But in ignorance and despair the girl had drugged herself till a creepy warmth was in her veins, and so, bound and helpless, would deliver herself to a worse than Mother Felicitas, unless Death, like a quiet friend, called her before such things could be.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LOVELY ANDRIA.

While Beryl Corselas slept like a dead girl in the flying railway-carriage, a woman sat in a beautiful house in London and wondered why she was remembering the strange goblin child. “I’m not fit to think of her or the convent, either,” she thought grimly. “Who would believe that I was ever Andria Heathcote, or brought up in a convent school?”

She got up and looked at herself in a glass with an insight that does not come to happy women. The world had taught her that a woman with a clear skin and good teeth has it in her own hands to be beautiful, but it was something else that had taught her to build up her beauty as an architect builds a palace for a king.

Her red-brown hair was but a little ruddier than in convent-days. She had been too wise to dye it; her round, young face was chiseled into the firmness of a delicate cameo by the sure hands of Love and vain longing; her brave mouth was more scornful, more self-reliant than of old, and the queer, veiled look was gone from her blue eyes. They were bold, under the lashes and brows she had learned to darken, and the head that had bowed so easily to rebuke was set proudly now. And yet there was little for Andria Erle to glory in. She turned sharply from the glass. “Bah! The child would not know me, nor I her,” she thought. “I wonder why I am thinking of her. Oh, I’m nervous—nervous! And I have no real cause, I can’t have any.”

But the step with which she paced the room was not that of a woman at ease. She was sick with a terror that grew daily, and she knew it. She looked at the magnificence about her, not indifferently, as she had been wont to look, but like a woman who holds luxury by a frail tenure and fears to lose it. Yet the luxury of the place came last to her troubled mind. There was more than that to lose; love and trust, that might go any day. To keep her thoughts away from that she tried to remember the convent, but it only maddened her.

“Oh, Mother Benedicta!” she said to herself. “You knew too little about the world when you sent me to a house like lady Parr’s. You and the good sisters would have thought that house hell on earth from the things that went on there. I might have, too, if I hadn’t been a blind fool. But I wouldn’t go back. I’ve been happy; I’ve had my day—and I’ve no reason to think it’s done yet. I know,” deliberately, “I’ve no reason!” and while she swore it to herself she kept listening for the postman’s knock.

It seemed to thunder through the house before she knew it. But the servant who brought in the one letter that had come found his mistress sitting reading, her exquisite paled satin tea-gown in careful folds about her languid figure.

Her heart knocked at her ribs as she took the letter; as the door closed behind the man she sprang to her feet, crushing the thin note to her breast.

“Oh, thank God!” she breathed, “thank God. I knew it would come. I knew he didn’t mean to throw me over.”

She kissed the senseless letter like a living thing. She knew each line of the address—every letter was dear to her; yet Beryl Corselas would not have known the name on the envelope, which certainly was not Andria Heathcote. To Mother Felicitas it might not have been so strange.

It was not for five minutes that Andria opened the letter, and when she did so she no longer thanked God for it.

It was a white, haggard wretch who crawled to a sofa and lay there staring at the written sheet in her hand like one who cannot understand. Yet it was plain English, and began, “Dear Andria,” as letters do. But her face was convulsed out of all beauty as she felt those few sentences burning into her brain; a dreadful trembling took her.

“I’m going to cry; and I won’t cry!” she said savagely. She was on her feet and across the room to where a stand of spirits and soda waited for a visitor who would never come back to that house. But though she poured out neat whisky and drank it, it could not stop that horrible trembling.

“I’m to go. He’s done with me!” she thought. “I—that thanked God at the sight of his letter;” her lips quivered in spite of her; “who’ve been faithful for five years.”

She tried to read the letter slowly and sanely, but one sentence in it seemed to leap to her eyes. “Of course you know our marriage was nonsense. The clergyman was never even ordained. It would not hold good anywhere, even in Scotland.”

“Then what am I?” thought Andria, and, being a brave woman, kept in the cry. She read on mechanically.

“The fact is I’m ruined. I haven’t got a penny left, and my father is nearly as bad. You have plenty of sense, you will see for yourself that I must give in to him and marry money. He will be beside himself till we are on our feet again and there is an heir to the property. He would never hear of my marrying you, even if our madness had not passed by this time. You will understand this is not a pleasant letter for me to write, so I will close it. I send you what money I can spare, but you need not expect any more, for I haven’t got it. The sheriff will seize the furniture to-morrow, but my father’s agent will take over the house and pay the servants. Let me have your address, like a sensible girl. But I know you will see reason, especially as you are not tied to me in any way, and the end would have had to come some day.”

There was no signature, and there were two pages preceding what was, after all, the gist of the matter. Andria Heathcote, who had never been Andria Erle except in her own mind, crept to her sofa and lay there, her face buried in the silk cushions Raimond Erle had chosen that very spring. But now it was November, and this was “a last year’s nest.”

She bit at her arm fiercely that pain might keep away tears. None of Raimond Erle’s servants should see that the woman who had never been his wife had been crying in her shame and anger. She wondered how much they knew. All London probably knew more than she had done. She remembered how Raimond had had no friends but men, how she had gone among them by the nickname of “The Lovely Andria”; how some of them had openly thought her shameless—the remembrance made her writhe where she lay.

A silver clock chimed, and she counted the sweet strokes.

“Five!” Five already, and she would not sleep another night under this roof. The whisky had steadied her, helped her; she rose and looked in the glass that an hour ago had reflected a woman who had hope left in her and saw that no eye but her own would see any difference. Andria Erle had looked nervous; Andria Heathcote was only a shade paler, a little harder-eyed.

She turned to ring the bell, and saw something on the hearth-rug. It was a check for ten pounds, and at first she would have let it lie. After five years he was turning her out of the house with ten pounds! But it occurred to her suddenly that she had no other money in the world.

“It is bad to have been made a fool of, but it is worse to keep on being a fool,” she said, with queer calmness, and stooped for the check.

Another woman would have sat down and written an answer to that letter, which would have cut even Raimond Erle. But to quarrel openly was not Andria’s way. If an opportunity came to repay she would repay; it was no use to write what he need not read unless he chose. Once more she turned to ring for a servant, and this time did not falter.

“Send my maid to me,” she said. “I have had a letter from Mr. Erle. He is not returning and I am going away. Lord Erceldonne’s agent will pay your wages.”

She spoke gently as she always did, and the servant admired her for it; he knew, as she thought, that things were at an end. But he liked her, as did every one who had ever served her, and he kept his sympathy from his face.

Her maid came as quickly as if she had been waiting outside the door.

“I want you to pack for me at once, Louise, I am going away to-night, and I must leave you here.”

“But, madam, you can never do without me,” said the girl awkwardly. She would like to go with the mistress who had never spoken unkindly even when she was displeased.

“There is no room for you where I am going.” Andria’s voice was gentle still. “You need not pack my evening gowns. But you must hurry, Louise.”

“Madam’s jewels, of course!” said the maid, with tears in her eyes. All the household but the mistress had known the end was coming.

Andria turned to the windows.

“I will see to the jewels,” she answered in a suffocated voice. “I will not take them.”

The maid dared not say more. But it was well that Andria did not see her packing. Every gorgeous gown her mistress owned was in the boxes decorously covered with underlinen and every-day clothes by the time Mrs. Erle came up-stairs.

Her jewels were spread out on the toilet-table; perhaps the faithful maid thought the sight of them would tempt her mistress to take them. But she shivered as the gorgeous, shining things glittered in the candle-light. Every one of them had meant something in the days when love was young; each stone held its separate insult now. She put them back in her jewel-case with averted face and ungentle hands. Diamonds and pearls, opals and beryls, not one would she keep; and her wedding-ring fell with a clink on the mass. Andria Heathcote had nothing to do with the baubles Andria Erle had loved.

She stood up straight and fair as Louise dressed her in a plain black gown. For three months she had been dreading this day, fearing heavily to note the small signs of its approach; but now that it was here she felt curiously calm.

“Tell James to call a cab,” she said, “and this is for you! You are a kind girl, Louise, and I have liked you.” She held out a long gold chain set with pearls. It was her own, not his; she had a right to give it away.

But the maid was crying.

“Don’t cry, child, for me,” she said steadily, “and take care of the jewels till Mr. Travers, the agent, comes to-morrow. He will give you a receipt for them, and you must send it to Mr. Erle at the club.”

“But you’ll come back, madam?” cried Louise, sobbing.

“No. Oh! my poor Louise, cheer up. There are better mistresses than I’ve been.”

“No, no!” said the girl passionately, “none. What haven’t you done for me and my mother?” The French girl would have kissed Andria’s hand, but with a queer feeling of superstition her mistress stooped and kissed her cheek. It was something to have a creature to say farewell to; there would be none to greet her home.

“Get the cab,” she repeated. And when the girl was gone she went to her writing-table. There was a photograph there and she stared at it. Why had she loved him? He was just a long-legged, haggard, gentlemanly-looking man, like scores of others, yet she had sold her soul for him.

Her hand was on the picture to put it in the fire, but a sudden thought flamed in her eyes and stayed her hand. On the back of it was written: “Raimond to Andria; on their wedding-day.” She would keep it! The world was thick, they might never meet; but if they did that writing might confound his dearest plans. She slipped the photograph into her pocket and went down-stairs. The French girl, with a pang at her heart, watched her get into the cab and drive away.

CHAPTER V.

HER EVIL GENIUS.

The train stopped with a jerk and a long jolting jar that startled all the passengers, and flung a solitary traveler from her seat in a second-class carriage.

She lay on the floor, lax, inert as the dead; but her eyes were open. Where was she? What was this hard, narrow place, where a light burned dimly? She thought for one awful instant of her alcove at the convent, and screamed wildly; but the train was starting and the whistles of the engine covered it. The noise of the wheels reassured the drugged wits of the girl on the floor.

“No; it’s not the convent—it’s the train, and I’ve waked up! Oh, why didn’t I die? Am I going to live after all that stuff?”

She struggled up and back to her seat, dizzy and sick from the laudanum. She tried to think. What should she—what could she—do now? Life was before her, and not the death she had craved. Presently the train would stop; they would put her out into the cold and darkness, and she had no money for shelter or bread.

“They ought to kill girls like me!” she sobbed. “What good has life ever been to me! And what shall I do if I’ve been tracked—if a telegram from Mother Felicitas is before me at Blackpool?”

Every one’s hand had been against her all her life, and it was well for her now. For a madness of determination came over her.

“They sha’n’t find me! No one shall find me,” she thought, clenching her hands. “I’ll hide somewhere and starve sooner than go back to Mother Felicitas!”

She opened the carriage window and drank in the cold evening air. It drove the fumes of laudanum from her and stopped the headache that was rending her. She had no reason to go to Blackpool; she could starve as easily in some other place. What if she got out the first time the train stopped, and slipped away into the dark? But it had been the stoppage of the train at Preston that had wakened her; she did not know there would be no pause between that and Blackpool. The train seemed to whirl interminably on, and she shut the window and lay back against the cushions; she would have warmth and rest as long as she could.

Strangely enough, she felt better for that drugged sleep—more reasonable, more sane.

But, think as she might, she could see nothing but a miserable, lingering death before her, and the death that had passed her by would have been easy.

The train whistled, then stopped; the guard came and took her ticket.

“Blackpool, miss,” he said to the pale girl with the swollen, weary eyes. The convent uniform was black and he thought cursorily that she was in mourning, a thought that served her well afterward.

She hurried by him without answering, and stood for one moment in the glaring station, bewildered by the crowd.

Her white face, her tawny eyes, with that strange vacancy about them which long years of bullying had brought there, were striking enough among the commonplace crowd that surged by her.

A long-legged, gentlemanly-looking man, whose handsome face was haggard and drawn till it almost came to being care-worn, pulled his brown mustache as he stood waiting for the London train.

“Looks as if she were in a mess!” he thought idly. “She might be handsome, too—it’s a pity!” and he turned away. It was some other fellow’s business; he had enough on his own hands without taking up a girl who stared past him till she caught his eyes on her and then ran with a sudden, frightened bound out of the lighted station.

“The wicked flee when no man pursueth,” thought Mr. Erle; he was rather fond of the Bible, for amusement merely. And he got into his train and thought of other things, not too comfortably.

He had had an exceedingly annoying interview with his father. After all he had done to please him, the elder man would scarcely listen to his question, or indeed speak to him.

At a strenuous appeal for money, indeed Lord Erceldonne had broken out savagely:

“You had better discover a lady who possesses it,” he had said roughly, unlike himself. “As for Erceldonne, you needn’t count on the succession to it.”

“What do you mean?” his son stared.

But Lord Erceldonne had recovered himself.

“Nothing,” he returned icily, “except that every stick we own is mortgaged. You must forage yourself.”

But his son had seen him crumple up a telegram that lay on the table. It was not those ancient mortgages that troubled him.

“I wonder what the deuce it was!” he reflected now in the train, for distasteful as London was, it was better than his father’s society.

“For a moment I thought my reverend parent was about to impart to me that I was not the rightful heir!” sneeringly. “He’s got something on his mind, but that would be rot! There’s been no question of it for years.”

The strange girl had completely left his memory as the train reached London; indeed, she had never stayed there. Mr. Erle glanced at his watch as he took a cab at Euston. It was not eleven o’clock; he would see what fortune had done for him before he went—by George! he had forgotten. He could not show himself in town. There was that business of the sheriff, and Andria!

“The Continent!” said he to himself. “As soon as possible! But first I must visit my—well, I hope he’ll be my banker!” He stopped the cab and got out at the very shop where Beryl had bought that useless laudanum no farther back than the morning.

“A shabby chemist’s,” she had thought, quite unconscious that the drugs were but an outward show, and that the proprietor was one of the largest book-makers in London, though he never attended a race. Sometimes he had provided Mr. Erle with sums that tided him over; but of late that gentleman had not been lucky. He entered the shop with a languid nod, and was glad to see the proprietor was alone.

For once, too, he seemed to be paying some attention to his legitimate trade. He was studying a greasy blank-book that was not out of his inside office.

“Ah, Mr. Erle!” he said. “I have some money for you—a hundred or more.”

Mr. Erle never moved a muscle, though he needed the money and had not expected it.

“Right!” he returned carelessly. “What have you got there?”

“Only my register, sir. By the way, could you read that name?” He pushed the book across the counter.

“B. Corselas,” in an unsteady, childish hand stared Mr. Erle in the face. B. Corselas, and his father, neither to hold nor to bind! There could be nothing in it, and yet—Mr. Erle was startled.

“No,” he said coolly. “Cassels, or something. Why?”

“Well, she was a slip of a thing,” dryly, “and she bought laudanum. She had a queer look about her—very light eyes!”

“Tall, charming?” scoffingly.

“No, Mr. Erle. Childish and frightened-looking. Will you have a check, or notes? They’re both here. She would have been handsome if she hadn’t looked hungry.”

“Notes,” said Erle slowly. “You’ll get into trouble yet, Peters, with your drugs. Good night!”

He was richer than he had been for many a day; but he was not thinking of that as he got into his cab and drove back to Euston.

It was queer that he felt so assured that he had seen at Blackpool the very girl who had signed Peter’s book. He dismissed his cab at the Euston Hotel, but before he entered it he returned to the station. A few inquiries made him surer than ever, but the “B. Corselas” staggered him. It might be all right, but if, after all these years, it was going to be all wrong, it was no joke.

He wrote a brief note to his father, for there was no sense in trusting a country telegraph office, and then retired to bed.

“Paris for me!” he reflected as he put out the light. “If there is anything queer the farther I’m out of it the better. Besides, other things. But, of course, it’s all a silly coincidence.”

He little knew the trouble it would have saved him if he had spoken kindly to that girl at Blackpool.

CHAPTER VI.

LORD ERCELDONNE MARKS THE KING.

On the shore of St. Anne’s, that is a day’s walking from Blackpool, was the wreck of a brig. Dismantled, gaunt in the daylight, black and gruesome at night, it lay canted on the beach a grim sign-post on a coast where the life-boat men are seldom idle.

The lamplighter looked at it as he finished his rounds in the dusk.

“’Tis said it’s haunted,” he remarked to himself, “but ghosts have quieter tongues than Margery! And ’tis the only place she’ll not rout me out of.” His conscience was not clear nor his legs quite reliable as he made an unostentatious progress over the shingle to the wreck. He was not drunk to his own mind, but he would be drunk to a certainty in the eyes of the rate-payers and his wife. Mr. Ebenezer Davids had no mind to be brought up before the vestry or the domestic tribunal.

He scrambled on board the weather-beaten hull of the Highland Mary, and made his way below, down a companionway that slanted at a discomposing angle. The darkness of the cabin was musty, but Mr. Davids was not squeamish. He felt his way to a moldy locker and collapsed on it. Something rustled, but he cared nothing for rats. He only turned more comfortably and let the joyful slumber of semi-intoxication possess him utterly.

The tide was rising; it lipped against the seaward side of the Highland Mary with a noise that was oddly like the frightened breathing of a weak creature. But there was no other sound till the lamplighter’s snores began to fill the cabin. Then came a faint rustling in the berth opposite him, a gasp as if a desperate resolve had taken away some one’s breath. The snoring kept on.

In the dark there was a sound of cautious feet; feet that had no strength or weight; but if any one stole up to the lamplighter he did not hear. In his sleep he flung out his arm, and it struck something that gave; something that was bending over him, trying to reach a red cotton bundle that lay between him and the wall. It was his supper of bread and cheese that he had not eaten, and the smell of the cheese, combined with the regular snoring, had drawn a living thing to his side.

He started up, sobered with terror, sweating with fear. What had touched him in the dark? What had screeched in his ear?

“The place is haunted, curse it!” he said, and was frightened afresh. For the instant he spoke a low moaning broke out at his very feet.

The lamplighter was a little man, and not brave. In sheer desperation and terror he remembered that he carried the tools of his trade in a bag at his side, and with a shaking hand he lit his long wax taper. As it burned blue in the close cabin he recoiled.

The place was haunted, indeed!

What was this on the floor, like a white-faced girl, whose long, black hair streamed over her? No living woman could be so thin, could have such strange, golden eyes.

“What—what are you? Get away!” cried the lamplighter wildly. He raised his foot to kick at the thing on the floor.

“Don’t! Oh, don’t hurt me!” The cry was human, utterly desolate. “I didn’t mean to steal, but I’m hungry,” cried the girl, with a sullen sob.

“Hungry!” said the lamplighter stupidly, and his taper nearly fell in his surprise. “What are you doing here if you’re hungry, frightening honest folk?” He grew angry as he remembered how nearly she had sent him flying back to Margery with a bogy tale that would have made him a laughing-stock.

“I’ve nowhere else to go.”

At the answer he stuck his taper upright in a convenient crack in the floor of the Highland Mary, and with a rough kindness lifted the girl to the locker. She was a threadpaper slip of sixteen or so, with the queerest eyes he had ever seen; even the lamplighter, who was familiar with poverty, had never seen a human being so thin.

“Why, you’re starved, lass!” he cried. “What ever made you come to this old hulk? You might have knowed there was no roast beef here. Where do you come from?” for his keen little eyes saw that her shoes were not the shoes of a tramp.

She did not answer, except to point to the red handkerchief that smelled of cheese.

“You can have it, certain!” he had a foolish lump in his throat as he stuffed the thick, unappetizing stuff into her hand. And he turned away as he saw how she tore at it with sharp white teeth like a dog’s. But she only ate a mouthful or two.

The lamplighter took a seat on the locker and stared at her.

“Come now, missus,” he said, not unkindly, “let us know what brought you here. You can’t stay here till you die—like this!”

“Where can I go? No one wants me.”

“Go back to your friends, lass!”

“I haven’t any, I haven’t any money, either, and it was cold and rainy, so I came in here. I’ve been ill, I think. It seems a long time.”

“By gum!” the lamplighter was nonplused. “Why didn’t you beg? Have you had anything to eat?” sharply.

“I hate people, and they hate me. No one would give me anything. I went out in the nights and got water at a brook over there, and I found some bread one evening.” She did not say it was crusts a dog had despised.

“How long have you been like this?” he gasped.

“I don’t know. More than a week. I’ve been ill, I——” Her head fell forward with a stifled groan.

“You’re sick, now, my lass!” he said pitifully. “Come, your way’s with me, and I’ll take you——” He stopped; he dared not take her to Margery, and the only other place was the workhouse.

“I won’t go to a convent,” she muttered, “I won’t!”

“It’s not a convent,” he said, puzzled. “Just a—well, there!—it’s hell on earth to my mind, but it’s better than this,” he broke out roughly, for the strange girl could not hear him; she was in a dead faint at his feet.

Staggering, sweating, Davids managed to carry her up the companionway to the deck that was keeled over at such an angle that, burden and all, he nearly slipped through the broken bulwarks to the stony beach. But he clawed and staggered valiantly, till he had laid the girl, who to his mind was dying, safely on the ground. Then he gazed about him. What was to be done next?

“There ain’t no choice as I can see,” remarked the bewildered Samaritan. “Though she’s gey and heavy for such a bag of bones.”

He shouldered her like a sack of potatoes, fearful that she might die on his hands.

“Here goes, and prays I that Margery don’t hear of it!” he muttered, and with toil and cursing, gained the highway, a ludicrous figure in the light of the November moon. His only thought was by what byway he could come at the workhouse, and as he puzzled at it he ran into a tall man in an Inverness cape who was coming from the opposite direction.

“What the devil!” cried the latter furiously. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”

“Beg your pardon, my lord,” gasped the despairing Davids. “I couldn’t look, she’s too mortal heavy.”

“She—who? Why, it’s you, Davids! What are you doing?” Lord Erceldonne stared as he had never stared in all his ill-spent life.

“Going to the workhouse,” said the man wretchedly.

“What for? And—why, it’s a woman!” said Lord Erceldonne, with unkind enjoyment. A squint-eyed, frowsy lamplighter with a romance was too delightful.

“It’s a lady, if you ask me,” retorted the man, with some dignity. “And I think she’s over near to dying for laughter.”

“What d’ye mean?” cried Lord Erceldonne, enraged at the just rebuke. Ebenezer told him. But it was too dark for him to see how Lord Erceldonne’s hand flew to his pocket where two letters lay.

“Put her down,” he ordered. “Let me look at her.”

Ebenezer obeyed, with some relief.

Straight and tall, her long limbs as nerveless as if she were dead, the girl lay on the ground. Her white face showed gaunt with famine in the moonlight as her matted, wild hair lifted in the night wind. For a moment both men thought her dead.

Erceldonne knelt down by her.

“Did she tell you her name?” His voice was thick.

“Not she!”

“Then she’ll never tell it now—she’s dead!” There was something so like recognition, exultation, in the pitiless words that Davids looked angrily at the speaker. Then he started.

The pale, worn face bent over the girl was hers almost line for line; allowing for the difference between sixteen years and fifty.

“My soul!” thought the lamplighter. “She is the very spit and image of his lordship.” He turned almost fiercely on the man, as if he had been his equal.

“She ain’t dead, and she ain’t going to die, while I can help it. Move, my lord—and let me carry her to the workhouse while there’s time.”

A stranger look than ever was on Erceldonne’s face. This was fate—but he had conquered fate before. He burst into a cackling laugh that made Davids jump; long and loud he laughed in the light of the moon over the girl who lay dying on the ground.

“Get on with you, then, to the workhouse!” he cried indifferently, but as he turned away his eyes were still full of laughter, in strange contrast to his savage temper when he met Ebenezer.

“I mark the king, it seems!” said Lord Erceldonne to the desolate night. “I mark the king, after all!”

CHAPTER VII.

FIRST BLOOD TO ERCELDONNE.

Mother Felicitas sat in her white-walled parlor, and her lean face looked gray against the whitewashed background from which the pictured saints and martyrs looked down indifferent-eyed. Opposite her sat her man of business—for even convents have such things—and his matter-of-fact manner was driving her mad.

“You traced that misguided child,” she said smoothly, “to Blackpool, I think you said.” She could hardly sit still in her chair.

“Easily. And then to St. Anne’s. But I regret to say I was too late. She had been hiding on an old wreck there starving, for nearly a fortnight, till a lamplighter found her and took her to the workhouse. I went there, of course, but the matron, a civil-spoken woman, told me the girl had been taken away only that morning by a Mrs. Fuller, who wished to adopt her.”

“Did they hand her over to a strange woman without any references?” said the mother, moistening her dry lips.

“It seems so,” he answered bluntly. “They had the address in Liverpool, but when I went there the caretaker told me Mrs. Fuller had that morning gone to the Continent with a young lady till the spring. Oh, I fancy it’s all right, reverend mother! You are too troubled about a good-for-nothing runaway.”

“Yes,” she said, and hid her hands in her sleeves that he might not see the trembling of them.

“But her well-being is naturally a—sacred charge to me. I feel all this terribly.” She wondered while she spoke how she was to find out what was racking her, indeed.

“Lord Erceldonne is lord of the manor at St. Anne’s—I suppose—he had not been interested in the sad case,” she observed.

“He was away. I heard by chance.” The lawyer had not got speech of Ebenezer Davids, who was too unimportant. “He had not been there for months.”

Mother Felicitas’ heart gave a bound of relief.

Then it was, after all, what it looked! Some tender-hearted fool had adopted the girl. She was not beaten—yet!

“Yes, yes!” she said indifferently. “But did the child, by the way, tell her name?”

“Certainly,” he answered, rather surprised; but Mother Felicitas, of course, had never raised her saintly eyes and did not see.

That was a blow; but still Erceldonne was away and he would certainly never see the workhouse register. He was in her power still.

“That is all, I think. Thank you,” she said calmly. “We must first wait till this Mrs. Fuller returns. You have her address? And then perhaps our stray may be induced to return to us. You will take some refreshment before you leave, Mr. Mayhew?”

But when he was gone Mother Felicitas sat cold and speechless. Perhaps she saw herself excommunicated if the whole story of her connection with Beryl Corselas ever came out.

“At least, he does not know and never shall,” she thought, when thought would come. “He shall fear me till he dies, as he has feared me this many a year. He shall pay, as he has always paid, to the enrichment of our order,” for she, of all the convent, had alone known the source of the roll of notes that came anonymously each year to her.

She frowned thoughtfully as she began to write a letter, dignified and guarded. It might be months in reaching the man it was meant for, but it would reach him in the end. It informed the guardians of the workhouse at St. Anne’s that the lady who had so kindly adopted the stray child had been authorized to do so by her only friend, the Mother Superior of the Convent of St. Mary; and that it was hoped the arrangement would be most satisfactory.

“As I hear that Viscount Erceldonne had kindly interested himself in the case, perhaps you would be so good as to let him know the ending,” the letter concluded, and when it was gone Mother Felicitas breathed more easily. Erceldonne should know that she was in keeping of his secret still; that the sword that hung over his head had not left her grasp.

But, clever as she was, she never dreamed of Erceldonne’s face when the letter was forwarded to him in London. He was very busy, but he let his business stand while he chuckled over that courteous epistle.

“There’s nothing so dangerous as being too clever,” he said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes; “and this is too good! Mrs. Fuller—oh! Mother Felicitas! since that’s your name now—truly you have strange friends, for a nun.”

He drew from his pocket two papers, the very ones to which his hand had flown on the night he had met the lamplighter. On one was written in an uneducated scrawl: “The Gurl is gone Run Away.”

It had never entered the mind of the reverend mother that Lord Erceldonne had no idea of paying the hush-money for a dead or vanished girl, or that he had established a spy in her very house in the shape of the loutish boy who carried her vegetables to market, the only male being in her employ. It did not even strike her when, in a week or so, the boy gave warning and returned to his natural orbit in Lord Erceldonne’s employ. He was used to watching ladies for his master, and this was only a queerer item than usual on the list.

The other letter was the “coincidence” his son had thought worth telling him—a letter that would have been wasted but for the lamplighter. Lord Erceldonne had reason to laugh that night.

He swept his correspondence into a drawer as a light knock came on his door.

“Come in!” he cried, and rose punctiliously, yet mockingly, for he knew who his visitor was.

A little woman, exceedingly pretty, charming mannered, and exquisitely dressed, stood on the threshold.

“May I?” her voice was not quite of a piece with the rest of her. “Dear Erceldonne! how warm your room is!” she exclaimed, seating herself.

“Bad habit!” he returned vaguely. “I suppose you’ve come to say you’re off?”

She nodded.

“Paris!” she cried gaily. “Having accomplished your lordship’s wishes and played nursemaid for a month, I suppose I may go and amuse myself again. My kind godmother, as you know,” she said flippantly, “is on the Continent!”

Erceldonne laughed. Truly that Mrs. Fuller whose address in Liverpool he had borrowed knew nothing of this one, nor of Beryl Corselas, either.

“What are you going to do with that child?” she continued. “Not bring her here, surely. It would not be edifying—for Raimond!”

Erceldonne’s middle-aged handsome face was utterly blank. He had no idea of telling his charming friend anything. She had served his purpose, and now the sooner he saw the last of her pretty person the better.

“St. John’s Wood is still standing,” he remarked easily. “As for Raimond, no one sees less of him than I,” yet she had made him angry; there was no one weaker than Raimond about a handsome face, and he had been struck with this penniless girl already.

“I hear the lovely Andria is——” she hesitated.

“Gone the way of all flesh, I believe, in hope of further exaltation,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

No one would have believed how hard he had worked to obtain just that result as he sat looking at his visitor with critical admiration. She really wore wonderfully!

“Well, you’re off! And you may have those diamonds you wanted, to take with you.” He had caught her expectant eyes. “What! Something finer?”

“I—I would rather have that paper of mine. Please, Erceldonne!” she said, with an earnestness that sat ill on her.

He rose, flicked her cheek lightly, and laughed.

“Not yet, my dear Emeline; I can’t spare it.”

There were tears in her hard eyes as he put a velvet case in her hand, but she dared not implore him. She knew him. She had got his “fancy” for him; she had hoped that would have wiped off the old score; but the man was too careful a blackguard.

Only one shot did the supposed “Mrs. Fuller” fire as she said good-by.

“The girl is a handful, even for you. I don’t think you can do anything with her.”

“Perhaps not.” Lord Erceldonne laughed in that sudden, unpleasant, loud cackle. “Oh, my dear Emeline! you have a short memory.”

The poor, painted, little sinner started; for the blow was cruel. Erceldonne laughed again as she crept out of the room she had entered so jauntily. He knew all her secrets; and she had not even touched the garment’s hem of his.

CHAPTER VIII.

A WOMAN’S DIARY.

“Tuesday, Dec. 7th.

“I never knew how much I read till now, when I have no books. Time hangs and hangs; writing this thing helps to pass it, though there is nothing to put down. I can’t think; I feel as if all this were a dream. This horrid room in Chelsea, and all those boxes left ‘to be called for’ at Paddington station. When they come to sell them—for that’s what they do with unclaimed things—they will wonder how the owner had the heart to forget them. But perhaps they won’t know each one of those plain dresses cost twenty pounds.

“I wish I had what they cost; I never realized what it took to live. I am going to realize it well enough next week, when I must get something to do, or starve.

“I write down all these sordid little sentences because I daren’t write the only thought that is in my mind. I would go mad if I let myself remember—and I can’t forget. Better to put down how I’ve lived for a month on ten pounds. I, who threw away as much of a morning to pass the time!

“I pay, let me see, fifteen shillings a week here, and buy my food besides. I ought never to have taken this room, but it looked dreadful enough; how was I to know that I could have got one for eight in a worse place? I’ve been here four weeks; that disposes of five pounds, counting my food, though I know the woman cheats me. My bread and tea never cost ten shillings from Saturday to Saturday. There are two pounds in my purse, and the other three have melted. How many fees have I paid at registry-offices? How many women have looked me up and down when I asked for a governess’ place, have seen through me with their disapproving eyes? I don’t know and I don’t care—but I’ll care to-morrow. I’m too tired to-night from tramping in search of an engagement and too cold in this room. And I’m afraid. Afraid of meeting him in the streets and having him pass me by. I’ve no spirit. I believe I could forgive him, but in an hour I may be just as sure I never could.

“The loneliness of it all frightens me, too. This room, where no one ever comes, the streets I walk all day in terror of meeting some man who knows. To-morrow I must get work. I’m losing all my courage. I’d give half my life to-night just to——”

The writing broke off, the page smeared where a quick hand had closed the book while the ink was wet. But on the other side it began again.

“Thursday.

“What have I done? And why does such a simple piece of business make me feel creepy, as if I had entered into a bargain with the devil! I’m saved! I’ve found a situation! But I feel something saying to me that I would have done better to starve in the streets.

“It was yesterday, two days after I last wrote in this diary. I was standing in the register’s office and two women who had wanted governesses had told me I would not do. I felt dizzy, for I had been walking too far. I leaned against the wall, too tired to go home, and the registry-office was warm.

“I was not noticing anything because my head swam. I was thinking that for women like me the world had only one path, and I would die before I walked on it—any farther. I was fighting off the horror of it when some one touched me on the arm.

“It was the registry woman. She had left her desk and there was no one in the room but her and me, and a middle-aged man.

“‘Miss Holbeach,’ she was saying—I dared not go back to Heathcote when I found I had no right to Erle. Every one knew Andria Heathcote’s story, and Holbeach was not noticeable—‘Miss Holbeach, don’t you hear Mr. Egerton speaking to you?’”

“‘I beg your pardon,’ I said, for I was stupid.

“The man handed me a chair as if I were a lady and not a would-be governess. I sat down and then I looked at him. I don’t know now what there was in his face that seemed familiar. I only saw it in that first glance; afterward I knew perfectly well that he was an utter stranger.

“He was rather tall and rather dark and thin. I think now that if he had let it his hair would have been gray, but then I just saw it was black. He had a pale face, wrinkled and full of crow’s-feet round the eyes, and they were very dark, almost black. They puzzled me—their shape—I seemed to know that. But the way they looked at me was not like any eyes I know or ever have known. He wore beautiful clothes and had a London man’s manner. I mean those men you meet in the season who are so civil and so quiet, as if no one in the world was their superior and there was no occasion to assert themselves. I ought to know that manner by this time.

“This man seemed to take me in without looking at me. I remembered I had on old gloves.

“‘This lady, I think,’ he said to the registry woman, ‘wishes to be a governess?’

“‘Miss Holbeach? Yes, sir,’ She frowned at me to stand up, but I couldn’t. The man sat down by me, and it was then I saw how lined his face was. He looked fifty when you were close to him.

“‘Miss Holbeach; thank you!’ He just glanced at her, but she went away as if he had pushed her. Then he spoke to me. He wanted a governess, or rather a companion, for his ward, a girl of sixteen. Lessons were not so much an object as being willing to go abroad. His ward was obliged to winter in the South. She was not strong. I could only stare at him; the thought of getting a situation and getting out of England at the same time nearly made me cry with joy—till I remembered a man like this would never take me for his ward’s governess.

“‘I won’t do,’ I said. ‘You will not want me. I have not any—any references!’ My own voice sounded so odd to me, as if I had never heard it before.

“‘Oh,’ he said slowly, ‘you have no references,’ and I saw something so queer in his look that I could not answer from astonishment.

“A woman like me, who watches a man’s face for sunshine or bad weather, learns little things. This man’s forehead, instead of contracting between the eyebrows with annoyance, had grown smooth with relief. I couldn’t understand it then, and I can’t now; but I know he was relieved that I had no references.

“‘This woman knows you?’ he said.

“‘Only because I came here for work,’ it was no use pretending things, and I didn’t try.

“‘You have not always been a governess, is that it?’ He spoke so quietly that I knew the woman at the desk could not hear him, but I answered out loud:

“‘I was educated for a governess, but I have had no need to earn money for some years. Now I must—do something,’ and I couldn’t keep my lips steady.

“‘Ah!’ he said. ‘And without a character you have been unsuccessful!’ But I saw he was not sorry for me, only thinking what to do or how to do it. For I knew, as I know that I sit here in this room with its fire and the rain on the window, that he was going to engage me.

“And he did. Without a rag of reference, with only a few questions—and now that I come to think of it he never asked me where I was educated. I couldn’t have told him. I suppose Mother Benedicta knows how I ran away from Lady Parr’s with—but I won’t write that name.

“But it has all come to this: I, who had no hope of ever getting an engagement, am to be companion to a girl at a salary of a hundred pounds a year. And I know that I’m not fit to be with any girl; the five pounds that he gave me for expenses looks like a fee from the devil as it shines on the table. For the more I think of it, the more sure I am that he was certain I was a woman with a past and not anything else in the world.

“But past or no past, I will write it down here in this book, and sign my name to it, that no girl shall ever learn harm from me, or anything but hatred for evil. My schooling has been hardly paid for; it can at least be useful in helping some poor girl to keep out of the agony I have known. There is no peace or joy for women like me, and I would never see any girl stray on the bitter road that I trod. If Mr. Egerton, for reasons of his own, has engaged me because I am what I am, he has burned his own boats. If the girl is as sly and sullen as he hints, I will be a better guardian for her than a saint like Mother Benedicta was for me.

“I have read this over, and it seems far-fetched and ungrateful. The man is kind and he is giving me a chance to live honestly; but yet I cannot feel that in my heart. There is something behind his kindness.

“Whether there is or not, I can’t get out of my bargain now. I am to go to Southampton to-morrow, to join Mr. Egerton and his ward on his yacht; a steam-yacht, thank goodness! I hate the sea. We are to go to Bermuda, of all places in the world! Not that I know any one there, but it seems the very end of the world.

“Mr. Egerton has a house there, and if his ward likes it, we may stay till spring. It is all one to me, since I shall be out of England. To-morrow I must get those boxes at Paddington that I never meant to call for. I would be glad never to wear any of those clothes again, but I have no choice. The five pounds he gave me would not buy my ticket to Southampton and get me a governess’ outfit ‘warranted to wear’ into the bargain.

“I write very prettily. As I look at the neat, close pages of this book, I wonder how they could have been written with so heavy a heart. The past sickens me and the future frightens me, though it may be with a senseless terror that I shall laugh at by and by.

“The future! I laugh now when I see I have written that word. There is no future, Andria Heathcote, alias Holbeach, for such women as you; if you dare but touch the smallest joy that may be offered you a hand will come from the past when you least expect it and snatch the new wine from your lips.

“‘This is your solace and your reward,

That have drained life’s dregs from a broken shard,’

“Good-night, Andria, and no dreams to you!

“May you do your work and live decently, till such time as your story comes out!”

CHAPTER IX.

ON BOARD THE YACHT.

Mr. Egerton sat in the smoking-room of the steam-yacht Flora and reflected—it was the first day the sea had favored reflection—on his plans.

They had given him more trouble than anything for sixteen years, but this very elaboration of detail pleased the man. He was a very cruel person, and a very cautious one, or he might have solved all his difficulties more easily and inexpensively. But wonderful as his luck had been lately, he was not out of the wood yet. He took up a tumbler of whisky and soda, and watched the mounting bubbles as if he were watching the workings of his own mind.

“First,” he mused, “there was getting out of the power of that woman in the convent. She can never threaten me now, to any effect; or turn on me. I know nothing of any girl. She cannot say there ever was one. She never could have, really. Second, there were those letters. Raimond is an ass, but if it hadn’t been for him I never should have stayed at Erceldonne, or come across that girl with the lamplighter. That saved me from having to scorn all England and from having to trust detectives—who retire and write books. And the ‘Mrs. Fuller’ comedy was lucky; it prevented my appearing in any way. And ‘Mrs. Fuller,’ having played her part, will never bother her head about what happened to her charge. If she did, she would never connect ‘Mr. Egerton,’ the governess, and his ward, with Lord Erceldonne’s queer ‘fancy.’” He laughed aloud. And then he thought of that diplomatic epistle of Mother Felicitas’, that had been so futile a lie.

“She could dictate to me while she had the girl, but not when there is no girl for her to produce. Third,” he resumed his counting, “there was my coming on that woman in the registry-office. The minute I saw her I knew she had a history, was at the end of her tether and in despair. No troublesome questions from a woman like that! She swallowed everything I told her because, forsooth, I had taken her without references. A woman who had no references and was dressed like a duchess was a fitter woman for my purpose than all the Mrs. Grundys in England. She stood being hustled on board and hurried off without a sight of her charge like a lamb, just because she didn’t care a straw what happened to her. I could see it in her face. And it’s just as well she doesn’t!” His own face contracted a little as at something slightly, yet unavoidably, unpleasant. “Well, no one will inquire about either of the ladies if their absence is prolonged!

“I didn’t tell her that obstinate little devil down-stairs wouldn’t see her, wouldn’t hear of her. She’ll find out soon enough what a handful she has before her, while it lasts. But whatever happens, no one will be able to root out dangerous tales of me and my tawny-eyed young friend. Mr. Egerton and his ward and governess having disappeared into space will not trouble Erceldonne.

“It was lucky Raimond was out of the way; it would have suited him to rout out things he would be a fool to know. He might even have fancied the girl. I wonder what set his mind on an old story! But it doesn’t matter. The affair will be nothing but a lying rumor soon; an absolutely absurd canard.”

He drank down the whisky and soda with small enjoyment, for it was flat, and the only troublesome reflection of the afternoon came to him.

“Damn that fool who put Beryl Corselas and her adventures in the papers,” he thought angrily. “The name might have set people thinking. But I don’t think so. I stayed long enough in London to be sure there was no revival of stale talk. Anyhow, if there were, it doesn’t matter. She’s disappeared, and by —— this time she’ll stay disappeared!”

He rose and looked out of the window.

It was a deck cabin, and almost within reach of his arm sat the governess looking vaguely out over a sea that was blue for the first time in the six days since they had left England.

It was rough still, but the rollers had purple hollows instead of gray ones, and curled over blue and clear. But the governess was not thinking of them, and her employer knew it. He rang the bell.

“Take this to Miss Holbeach,” he ordered, penciling a note, and then buried himself in a French novel as one who is luckily far away from an unpleasant business. That little tiger-cat had fought hard. First, against the departure of “Mrs. Fuller,” to whom she had taken a fancy; and then against the installation of a governess. To “Mr. Egerton” himself she maintained a stony sulkiness; she did not like him, and took no pains to hide it. She had openly accused him of tricking her about Mrs. Fuller, and would not listen to his plausible tale of explanation.

“I don’t know why you bother about me!” she had said, staring at him. “But I don’t seem able to get away from you. I don’t suppose you and the governess can be any worse than Mother Felicitas! Yes, I know you’ve been good to me, but——” She had stopped, afraid to go on. Only anger with this strange man who had carried her off from Mrs. Fuller had made her so outspoken, and as he looked at her, she dared not go on. She had turned and fairly run to her cabin, where she had stayed ever since, too seasick even to wonder at the strange turn her life had taken.

Andria took the little note the steward handed her. He was an Italian, as were all the ship’s company, even to the stewardess. None of them could speak a word of English, and she knew no Italian. It had come to her oddly that one of the few questions Mr. Egerton had asked her was whether she knew Italian. But she resolutely assured herself that the two things had no connection. The note was just a line.

“Would Miss Holbeach kindly go and see Mr. Egerton’s ward in her cabin.”

The writer, to be truthful, had wanted the meeting over between the two. The die was cast now; neither could get away from the other, and if they had sense they would make friends. They would need to be friendly! And he grinned over his novel, wondering if the headstrong child would try to scratch the governess’ eyes out. If faces meant anything, this Holbeach woman had managed men in her day.

Andria was half-way down the companionway as he thought it; and stood presently at a closed door. She knocked, and the stewardess came out.

For a moment the governess was silent. She did not know the name of her pupil, had never heard it all this time; she did not know who to ask for. Then she laughed, for the Italian woman would not have understood her in any case. At the sudden lifting of the lowered blue eyes the maid moved aside. Andria, without waiting, went into the cabin.

It was full of fresh air from an open port-hole, but in the berth, heedless of air or sun, lay a huddled figure with its face to the wall.

Nothing could be seen of the girl but a pale averted cheek, and a wild mass of dusky hair neither black nor brown. Why did the years roll back at the sight of that hair, dark and lusterless, a color without a name? Andria was weary and unstrung, body and soul; she started at the uncanny, waveless hair.

“Are you better?” she said, and her voice was oddly troubled. “I hope you are.”

“Go away! I don’t want you,” said an angry, stifled voice from the pillows.

At the sound of it Andria honestly gasped. Was she dreaming that she was back in the convent again, or—did she know it?

With the quick gentleness that was of convent learning, she shut the door on the waiting stewardess.

“Beryl!” she cried, under her breath. “Beryl, is it you?”

The figure in the berth started up, sweeping aside its veil of hair with a hand and arm as thin as a goblin’s. The strangest yellow eyes in the world stared from a white face at the intruder.

“Yes, it’s I,” said the indifferent, insolent voice of long ago. “I suppose you’re his governess?”

“Don’t you know me?” Andria was trembling with nameless joy. Could it be true that her pupil was no stranger, but the child she had loved long ago?

“No!” said Beryl Corselas, with the old vacancy in her face. “Unless——” she paused and looked straight in Andria’s eyes. The next instant she was out of bed, taller than Andria in her long white night-dress. “Andria!” she cried; “Andria,” and flung her thin young arms around the woman in her black Redfern gown. “How did you come here? Where have you been all this time? Did he find you for me?”

“I don’t know,” said Andria helplessly. “How are you his ward, and when did you leave the convent?” She held the girl off and looked at her.

It was Beryl Corselas, indeed, but the five years that had passed must have dealt hardly with her to have made her into a girl like this. A quick pang shot through Andria at the sullen hopelessness of those yellow-brown eyes.

“Tell me,” she said quickly, “did you never get my letters? Did Mother Benedicta never speak of me?”

“Mother Benedicta died the week you left,” the girl answered simply. “Sister Felicitas is reverend mother now.”

“But you—how are you here?”

The girl told her, leaving out nothing. And if Andria had been distrustful before, she was frightened now.

Mr. Egerton, whoever he was, had no right to Beryl Corselas. There was more in his adoption of her than appeared. Andria saw quite well why he had dispensed with references in engaging a governess; he did not want any one with a good character as a trustworthy person.

“Beryl,” she said slowly, “don’t tell him you know me. Let me tell him myself.”

“I never tell him anything. I don’t like him,” she said calmly. “But doesn’t he know? Didn’t he get you on purpose?”

“No. He never even told me what your name was. And oh! I——” she stammered, “my name’s Holbeach now, don’t forget and say Heathcote!”

“Are you married? And——” she stopped, looking at Andria’s black gown awkwardly.

“Don’t!” said Andria sharply. “I’ll tell you by and by,” for some one had knocked at the door. It was the stewardess, and she pointed to the open port-hole.

“We shall be there to-morrow. We are arrived,” she said. The words Andria did not understand, but the gesture was plain enough, and the governess looked out of the open port.

Something like a blue cloud was visible as the yacht rose and fell. Andria ran on deck. There it stood on the port bow, a high, blue coast, mountainous against the sunset. As she stood leaning over the rail she saw Egerton at her elbow.

“What is that land?” she said quickly. “I did not know we passed any after Madeira!”

“Neither we do. This is Bermuda,” he said carelessly. Not a muscle moved in the governess’ face. No yacht could go from Southampton to Bermuda in six days; even a big liner could not do it.

“Already?” she said slowly.

“The boat is fast,” he answered, but he turned away quite satisfied, for there had been no hidden meaning in her voice.

Andria, left alone, never stirred.

Where this man was taking her and Beryl, or for what mysterious reason, she did not know; but that high land that towered against the sunset was certainly not Bermuda.

The governess’ nerves tightened sharply.

What could this mystery round Beryl Corselas be? And of what evil was that lie about Bermuda the beginning?

CHAPTER X.

THE HOUSE BY THE SEA.

“The chill is in my bones.”

Calm water and the stoppage of the engines roused Andria from her first sleep after a wakeful night. It was daylight, and the sun was shining. She was on deck as soon as she could dress, but her very hurry made her take a long time.

The yacht lay in a small, almost landlocked, bay; the water was exquisitely blue, shoaling to green where it lapped on a white beach. A keen, heavy scent of wild orange-blossoms came from the high shores that looked an impenetrable tangle of thick woods; and behind, dark against the rose and gold of the morning sky, rose a high mountain, that cast a long, threatening shadow over the smaller slopes that ran to its feet.

Utterly puzzled, Andria stood staring, scarcely even noticing the warmth of the scented air. She turned as Beryl Corselas came to her side, pale and half-awake.

“Is this Bermuda?” she said pettishly. “Thank goodness, for I hate the sea! But I don’t see the house.”

“What house?” asked Andria sharply.

“Mr. Egerton’s, where you and I are to spend the winter with him. Didn’t you know?”

Andria was speechless, for the place looked a desert island.

“Look, there he is now!” she said, with surprise. “He must have been on shore.” Beryl pointed to one of the yacht’s boats that was pulling off to them from the white beach. It was certainly Egerton who sat in the stern.

“Beryl,” Andria said sharply, “I hate teaching you to be deceitful, but mind you don’t let him know you’ve ever heard of me before. I don’t know why, but I don’t trust him!”

“Neither do I. Yet but for him I might be back with Mother Felicitas.”

“I know, and I’d be starving. I was very poor when he found me. But I’ll tell you all that later on.”

“Not all,” she thought, as she moved from the girl as Egerton reached the yacht; “just enough. I wonder if I should have told her this isn’t Bermuda! I don’t see what good it would have done. Whatever it is, we can’t get away from it or him. There’s something queer, and Beryl’s the key to it. But I can’t do anything till I find out a little more. I wonder”—looking at the pale, indifferent face of her charge—“if she knows more than she pretends. All this may be clear as daylight to her, for all I know.”

For sullen reserve was written on the handsome, obstinate face, and Beryl had always been odd enough.

“So,” said Egerton lightly, as he joined the governess, “you have been making friends with your pupil. She is a queer mortal.”

Andria, looking at him, could hardly repress a start. She saw now what had been familiar to her in this man’s face. He was as like Beryl Corselas as middle age can be like youth, except about the mouth. Where the girl’s was sullen and timid, his was clear-cut, decisive. But the difference in the eyes was only in color; his were all but black; hers uncanny, tawny gold, like old wine; the shape of the eye-socket was exactly similar in both faces.

A queer compunction came over Andria. Perhaps the man was Beryl’s father! That would explain almost everything—except that senseless lie about Bermuda.

“We have made friends, yes,” she said slowly. “Miss Corselas tells me we are to stay here?”

He nodded, and watched her as she looked all round the tree-covered hills, where no houses were to be seen.

“You don’t see anywhere to live? My house is up there, a short distance from the shore,” said Egerton, pointing directly in front of him. “I have just been there to see that the servants were prepared; we are going on shore to breakfast. Please don’t turn pale, we will have some coffee before we go.”

As in a dream, Andria Holbeach—who had so short a time since been Andria Erle in a very different place, but with no better right—found herself being put on shore like cargo. There seemed no need for such haste, and she saw with wonder how quickly the sailors were getting out of the boats not only her own and Beryl’s boxes, but packing-cases of stores. But she had little time to watch them. The instant Mr. Egerton set foot on the firm, white sand, he led the way up a narrow path that could not be seen from the yacht.

“After me, please, Miss Holbeach,” he said, with a total change of manner. “And look out for the llanos.”

What llanos were she did not know, but she soon saw. Great ropes of some vine were thick across the neglected path, a very trap for unwary feet. Sharp edges of uneven rock cut her boots as she hurried after Egerton. The man, for his age, was getting over the ground marvelously.

High on each side of the path were wild orange-trees, pinky-white with blossoms and headily sweet. Scarlet hibiscus flaunted great flowers the size of her two hands; lilies sprang everywhere on the lower ground; pink and white heaths showered her with their tiny petals as she brushed past thickets of them.

“I can’t walk so fast,” said Beryl from behind her. “Tell him to wait.”

Egerton looked round.

“It is not a good place to loiter in, this low ground,” he observed; “the scents are heady in the early morning.”

Andria, to her surprise, saw that his hurry was not put on; he was glancing round him with real apprehension. And what could there be to fear in a paradise of flowers like this?

“Do you mean there is fever here?” she asked, catching up to him.

“No,” he answered shortly; “merely what I said. The flowers give one headache; the place is overgrown with them.”

It was to a certainty. Blossoms she had never heard of dangled sweet-scented tassels in her face; the soft, warm air was like a greenhouse. But she had no time to look as Egerton hurried on. The path, at times, was but a thread; she had to help Beryl over rocks and through thickets, for her head was still dizzy from the voyage. And all the while the anxiety on their guide’s face was plain; it shook Andria’s nerves in spite of herself.

Suddenly the rough path ended among great rocks, higher than a man’s head. Egerton led the way through them, and they emerged suddenly on an open space of coarse turf, with great trees scattered over it. Hot and breathless as she was, Andria saw that the apprehension was gone from Egerton’s face; whatever their danger had been, it was past.

“There is the house,” he said; and as they went slowly across the dewy grass an exclamation broke from her.

She had expected a low wooden bungalow. The house that they came on from behind a screen of trees was fit for a palace.

High and white it stood in the morning sun, built of creamy stone; all porticos and shady verandas. Green jalousies shaded the balconies, and behind the great pile the ground sloped upward, so that it stood against a background of flowering trees.

Yet something in the look of the place filled Andria with terror. She, who feared nothing since she had nothing left to dread, felt her blood turn cold. The house looked evil; evil and wickedness lurked in it as in a nightmare; the orange and scarlet creepers that decked the lower verandas flaunted like sins in the morning sun.

As she went up the broad, white steps and crossed the threshold into the hall, a shudder of unutterable fear took her. And yet there was nothing but luxury in the room she entered. She looked at Beryl. There was only weariness in the girl’s face as she sat down in the first chair she came to and looked listlessly about her.

An empty vestibule had led into a large room, lined, floored, and ceiled with polished wood. Gorgeous rugs, gorgeous silk cushions covered the plainness of the wickerwork furniture; tastelessly arranged flowers were everywhere, and even a piano stood against the wall.

Egerton, his face as calm and matter-of-fact as if he had never hurried them up that narrow path like a man in dread, pulled an old-fashioned bell-rope; a colored woman in spotless white stood in the doorway before the sound of the bell had ceased.

“Breakfast waiting, sir,” she said, gazing at the two strange ladies curiously.

He nodded.

“Here is your new mistress, Salome,” he said, turning to Andria. “Mind you take care of her and this young lady.”

“For de Lawd’s sake, sir,” said Salome, “dat’s certain. Don’t I always——”

Andria, behind Egerton’s back, knew that his eye had cut the woman short.

CHAPTER XI.

TWO WARNINGS.

All through breakfast she sat like a woman whose every perception is sharpened by fear. The very ordinariness of that meal, served faultlessly by Salome and another colored woman, only seemed to make her more curiously fearful. The lie about Bermuda, the breathless hurry up the path, the sudden relaxing of the vigilance in Egerton’s eyes as they came out on open ground, were all parts of a puzzle she could not fit together. She sat ready for anything as she ate mechanically; but even she was not prepared for what was coming next.

From her seat at the table she had heard the voices of the sailors as they brought up the endless boxes, heard the thump with which each one was deposited in some back veranda—for solid as the house looked, inside it resembled a whispering gallery. A colored woman came in and told Egerton the things had come. Should the men go?

He rose hastily, and said something from the veranda to the waiting sailors before he turned to the maid.

“Give them breakfast,” he said shortly, “and then we’ll be off!”

We! Even Beryl looked at him, though so far nothing in this strange place had seemed to rouse her from a dull apathy.

“Yes,” Egerton said quietly, “I’m going, too. I shall leave you two ladies in Salome’s charge. I may be gone a month or six weeks. I have some business. But you will be quite comfortable here; it is certainly quiet;” and he laughed in that harsh cackle that was so out of character with his polished voice and manner. The sound of it grated on Andria’s nerves.

“But what,” she began, “I mean, is there no one in the neighborhood—are we alone on this island? What shall I do if Miss Corselas is ill?” She was so confounded she could scarcely speak.

“Salome can look after her. She has all sorts of medicines,” he returned. “Neighbors? No, you have none. You need fear no interruptions in either your work or play.”

“But I thought there were any amount of people in Bermuda!” Beryl had lifted her head and was staring at him with those strange, tawny eyes.

“Bermuda is a big place,” he said, with a slow smile. “You won’t see many people, and I shall come back as soon as I can——” He turned suddenly to Andria, who sat pale and motionless, certain that his coming back would be a long time in arriving. “My leaving you is unavoidable,” he said, as if he knew her thoughts, “and also for the best. You will learn to know each other better without a third person. You may go about as you like, but I may as well tell you that most of the country behind the house is impenetrable scrub, but quite safe if you care to try it.” And it seemed as if his harsh laugh broke out against his will, so quickly did he check it.

“The only things I warn you not to do,” he went on, “are to go out at night, and to go up and down to the shore by that short cut we used this morning. You might easily hurt yourselves there; slip on the rocks, trip on the vines; a hundred things. And Salome will show you a better road when you wish to bathe or sit by the sea. But above everything”—and he lifted his hand impressively, and Andria stared as if she were fascinated where she sat—“do not stay out after sundown, and never, never stir one step outside after dark.”

There was something in his voice that carried warning and conviction.

“If you take my advice,” he continued, a shade less earnestly, “you will not even walk on the upper verandas after nightfall. The lower one you must never think of but by daylight. The air is health itself in the day, but at night it gives fever. You understand?”

“Quite,” said Andria, whiter than a sheet of paper. “Quite.”

“Then I will bid you good-by. It will be no time before you see me again. The days slip by here, you will find.”

He opened the door for them to leave the room, and shook hands with studied courtesy as they passed.

The governess never looked at him; she was quivering with rage.

Beryl was so like him that she might easily be his daughter, and he was leaving her here with a woman of whom he knew less than nothing, whom he had chosen because she had absolutely no qualifications. And leaving her, too, in a place he owned was fever-haunted. If it had been in Andria’s power she would have knocked him down, and taken Beryl at a run to the boat. But, even if she did this, it would avail her nothing.

Beryl was tired out, and one of the colored women showed her to her room.

Andria remained in the dining-room, absorbed in her reflections.

Suddenly she heard the sound of voices on the veranda without. She went to the window, and, screened by the jalousy, saw Egerton and Salome.

“So you haven’t seen anything of him lately?” Egerton was saying.

“No,” answered Salome; “not a hoof of him been round here since summer. Dey won’t be no more accidents dis time. He’s gone, and—dey’s gone, too.”

“Well! that’s good news,” he said slowly; and why did she think there was disappointment in his voice?

“But don’t let those two ladies go out after dark, all the same! There’s fever; remember that!”

“Might as well kill ’em as scare ’em to death,” said the woman shrewdly. “But I’ll lock up every night same as always. Dat nigh shook me into my grave, dat last trouble.”

“See, then, that there’s no more,” he said sternly. “You’re responsible for them till I come back. And I’ll have no talking to them, mind that. You can’t afford to know anything about accidents, and I suppose neither of the others know anything to tell.”

“Not one of ’em.” Her voice shook as if at some horrible memory. “You think I tell what I find, and bury? Nobody knows nothing ’bout dis nigger——”

“But me,” said Egerton slowly. “And what is done here you are responsible for, and you know it.”

She had good reason to. She broke out into a flood of protestations that he cut short; and while the listener stood trying to make sense of them she heard the man’s soft, quick footfall leaving the veranda.

She had no mind to speak to him now. She knew there would be no satisfaction from him; nothing but smooth lies. Before she could move she heard Salome speaking to herself where Egerton had left her.

“‘Take care o’ dem ladies,’ he says,” she broke out in a kind of wail. “‘You’s ’sponsible.’ But who’s going to take care of me, an’ Chloe, an’ Amelia Jane? Nothin’ but our own black skins. Praise de Lawd dis day dat I ain’t white!”

She shuffled off, and Andria went up-stairs, pale and half-distraught. What sixth sense made her sure that all this show of warning, of caution, only covered something that was meant to happen.

“You’re responsible,” he had said to Salome, and a horrible conviction was cold at Andria’s heart. If anything dreadful overtook her and Beryl, Egerton would have washed his hands of it. He had warned them and their keeper!

Sick with apprehension, Andria almost ran against Amelia Jane, waiting, stout and attentive, on the landing.

“You looks terrible tuckered out, missus,” she said respectfully. “Best lie down and rest.”

Andria nodded; and then spoke on a sudden impulse.

“Is this place Bermuda?” she said.

“Law’s sake, missus, certain it is! Didn’t you know dat?” the colored woman said emphatically.

“No,” said Andria slowly, walking past her.

CHAPTER XII.

THE HAUNTING EYES.

Beryl Corselas, wearied out, had slept from ten in the morning till late afternoon.

Now, as she sat in the drawing-room with the western sun pouring through the open doorway, she looked a different girl; one whom Egerton would scarcely have known.

Her dusky hair was dressed like Andria’s, her golden-tawny eyes shone serene in her pale face; even the crimson of her lips was brighter. For the first time in all her miserable young life she was happy. As a child, she had worshiped Andria Heathcote, and to be alone with the only human being she had never feared or deceived was rapture to her; even in this lonely island, with not a creature but themselves and the black servants. The drawing-room looked wonderfully homelike, with its open piano and comfortable tea-table, to the two who were so strangely met after five years.

“Andria,” Beryl said, drawing a long breath and clasping her thin young arms round her knees, “why are you so quiet? Why aren’t you like me, ready to dance because you’re free? Free—but you can’t know what it is to me!”

“‘Free among the dead,’” quoted the elder woman softly under her breath, but Beryl’s ears were good.

“What do you mean?”—looking up from her low seat with eyes like wells of golden light.

Andria rose, and opened the two doors of the room. There was not a soul in sight, and from somewhere she could hear the servants talking over their tea.

“Beryl, how brave are you?” She had shut the doors softly and come very close, so that her voice was but a whisper.

“I don’t know!” said Beryl, startled. “Rough words—Mother Felicitas—always made me a coward. But there are neither here.”

“There’s something. I don’t know what. Listen”—Andria’s voice was suddenly protecting, motherly—“and don’t speak loud! You heard Mr. Egerton warn us not to go out after dark on the verandas, or use that path. Well, there is some reason, I can’t tell what. I heard him talking to Salome, and I know the place isn’t safe. And he knew it when he brought us here.”

“He only said we’d get fever if we went out after sunset. If he wanted us to, he wouldn’t have warned us,” said Beryl sensibly.

“I know! But——” The shrewd reason of Salome’s “might as well kill ’em as scare ’em to death” came back to her. She must not fill the girl with fear like her own—only she wished she had not overheard that talk about accidents! She began to walk up and down the room restlessly.

“I can’t see why he brought us here!” she cried, but guardedly. “What reason could he have? Think, Beryl, why do you imagine he ever took you away from that Fuller woman? What did he say?”

“Nothing; but that she was too poor to be able to afford to be kind.”

“Do you think he knows anything about you—is anything to you?”

“No, but kind as he has been, I can’t like him.”

“Why did he pretend to bring us to Bermuda, and leave us in a place like this? That is what puzzles me. I would think he knew something of you; wanted to hide you away safely, if——” she broke off. It was no use to say “if I didn’t feel that this was a dangerous place, and that he deceives us about it because he didn’t want us even to know where he had taken us.”

“What do you mean?” said Beryl, staring. “Isn’t this Bermuda?”

Andria laughed as Beryl’s Andria had not known how.

“No!” she returned contemptuously. “Bermuda is a lot of small islands; small and low, not high like this. And it’s full of people—an English garrison and American visitors. I knew a man who went there.”

Beryl’s eyes dilated like a cat’s.

“Then what’s this?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” answered Andria, shrugging her shoulders. “I haven’t enough geography.”

“Andria, you don’t believe he means to leave us here or murder us,” said Beryl, with a queer calmness.

“The first, perhaps! Not the last, or he wouldn’t have told Salome to take care of us.”

“Did he?”

Andria nodded. There was no need to say she was sure he had not meant it.

“But there’s nothing to take care of us from!” continued Beryl ungrammatically.

“He said there was. Oh, Beryl! I think and think, and I can’t see daylight. Why he brought us, why he lied to us; what it all means! He never saw me in his life, nor heard of me, so it must be on your account. No one in the convent ever knew who you were except Mother Felicitas——”

“Did she?” asked Beryl sharply.

“Yes. But never mind her now, I only guessed that she knew. Think if you can remember anything before you ever came to the nuns.”

Beryl shook her head hopelessly.

“I’ve often tried. I can’t remember one thing but a woman who used to hold me so tight and hard against her that I cried. It seemed to be in a room with a queer violet light in it—but it may be just a dream!”

“It’s no more useful.” Andria walked to the open door and stood watching the sun dip into the bay they had reached that morning; it lay empty now, blank, rose, and opal under a gorgeous sky, but she was not thinking of it. She was no girl like Beryl, but a woman, with a woman’s sense of responsibility. Beryl was her charge, she would take care of her—but how? That queer, blank feeling of thoughts that would not come overpowered her as it had the day she had learned she was not Andria Erle, but only Andria Heathcote, dishonored and deserted. A soft, heavy step made her start.

“’Scuse me, missus,” said Salome civilly, “but it’s mighty nigh sundown, and I got to lock up dis place.”

“Lock up now!” Andria’s gentle voice was even, as usual. “Why, Salome?”

“It’s dark here, missus, de minute after de sun drops. I always does like dis;” and she moved from jalousy to jalousy, round the long veranda, drawing down and bolting each stout wooden shutter with easy strength.

To the remonstrance of the new mistress she paid no more attention than to a child’s; and, in truth, Andria could not wish it. Since there was some danger, somewhere, by all means let Salome bar it out! But she meant to discover and fight it openly before long.

As the black woman barred the front door, Andria noticed how strong it was, and how heavy. Was it to shut in—or to shut out—that the bolts were so big!

“Where do you sleep, Salome?” she asked suddenly.

“In de quarters behind de kitchen.”

“Out of the house, do you mean?” she asked, with an uncontrollable start.

“Yes, missus, after de ladies’ dinner, at half-past seven, Chloe an’ me an’ Amelia Jane goes to our own house.”

“But we can’t stay all alone, Salome! If we wanted anything in the night——” said Andria, aghast now in good earnest.

“De ladies ring de bell,” returned the woman anxiously. “Dat’s de only way.”

“May I come and see? I’d like to.”

Salome chuckled. She led the way through what seemed half a mile of empty rooms and disused pantries into the kitchen; from its barred and grated window Andria saw a paved courtyard, with a high wall on two sides, on the third a stone house.

“Oh, you’re not far! I could run to you.”

“Please don’t, missus! Ring de bell; we’ll do de running,” said Salome anxiously.

“Then you’re not afraid to cross the courtyard in the dark?” she asked, with sudden quickness.

Salome looked nervously at the courtyard wall.

“No, missus,” she answered. “Colored people ain’t got time to be frightened o’ de dark.”

Andria remembered what the woman had said about her black skin protecting her. What could she have meant?

By the time she was back in the drawing-room again she saw Salome had been right about the darkness. It had dropped on the world like a curtain the instant the sun vanished.

There were no blinds to the windows, and in the lamplight after dinner the dark squares of them were like blind eyes. As the two lonely girls sat talking, each, without telling the other, felt a growing dislike to those black windows, through which the darkness of the shut-up veranda showed like a solid wall. By degrees a curious quietude fell on the two. How silent the house was, and how silent the night outside.

“Andria,” said Beryl softly, “have the servants gone to their funny little house? Who puts out these lights?”

“I do. We leave the hall lights burning, Salome said.”

Beryl gave a sudden shiver.

“Let’s go to bed! I don’t like it here in this room.”

“Don’t you? Why?”

The girl, with an infinitesimal movement of her finger, pointed to the unblinded windows.

“Those!” she whispered. “I feel as if some one were looking in.”

So did Andria. A dreadful feeling that they were watched had come on her as they talked. Brave as she was, she would have given a good deal to have had her back to the wall instead of those windows, that might suddenly splinter and crash in.

“That’s nonsense!” she said, more to herself than Beryl. “The jalousies are shut; no one could see in.”

“They could—through the slats!”

“You goose, there isn’t any one within miles!” If Andria’s quick laugh jarred a little, Beryl did not notice it as the elder girl extinguished the lamps.

“Come along to bed—you’re getting nervous,” she commanded; and purposely blundered against a chair in the dark.

Once in her own room she put out the light there, and knelt by the shut jalousies of the veranda—listening. She had heard something down-stairs; had laughed that Beryl might not hear it, too. Now, in the hush of the veiled moonlight, she heard it still.

Some one was below her, in the garden, going round and round the house with a fevered eagerness, almost running. Holding her breath, she heard those quick, quick steps, and her blood grew chill.

Who could be there?

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PATTERING FOOTSTEPS.

In a less lonely place the governess would have thought nothing of those footsteps, but here she had been expressly told two things—there were no neighbors and there was danger abroad at night.

“I wonder if I dare!” she thought, and peered through the slats of the jalousy. The moon was on the other side of the house; she could see that much, for this side was in deep shadow. No one below could possibly see if a jalousy were pushed out an inch or not. She unbolted the smallest division of the heavy hanging shutters, and noiselessly pushed it outward as far as she dared.

All she could see was the strip of garden and shrubbery directly beneath her; darkly shadowed as it was she could not tell if there was any one there.

“The night is dreadful in this place—dreadful!” she thought. “There might be devils behind every bush. The very moonlight is not like the good, clear light I know. Mr. Egerton need not have warned me not to go out—nothing would take me into those dreadful shadows, that veiled, honey-colored light.”

The heavy jalousy tired her wrist, in another minute she must let it go, and so far had learned nothing. She had known down in the drawing-room that some person or thing was outside. Nothing moved now in the stirless garden—those strangely light, quick steps had ceased. But out of the quiet another sound and a nearer smote on her senses, a creaking as of wood rubbing on wood.

Her aching wrist forgotten, she peered through the crack, and with horror, for the creepers were swaying below her.

Some one was climbing up!

Somehow, she shut the jalousy, bolted it and got back into her room. Something noiseless, light, a darker shadow against the dark, clung for an instant to the very shutter she had just closed, clung and was gone. She heard the quick slither of it as it went down the creepers, but whether it had been man or beast she could not tell.

Her terror had taken her to the opposite wall of the room, that she might at least have something solid behind her back, and for a long minute she stood there, sick with the horror of the thing.

Yet as she stood there, trembling-kneed, her heart grew strangely light; she felt suddenly uplifted, happy, in the midst of she knew not what mysterious dangers. Here was the chance to do as Mother Benedicta, that saint on earth, had bidden her long ago. To fight Beryl’s battles bravely, and in doing it rub out, perhaps, those years that had been so evil. For evil they had been; she had never been sure as she pretended that Raimond Erle and she were man and wife. She had snatched at happiness, had cared little if that happiness were a sin, and now——

“I have my chance to blot it out,” she said to herself deliberately. “I’ll save the child if I have to die for her. Perhaps Mother Benedicta’s saints won’t shut me out of heaven then.”

The hope that had never yet left her, that Raimond Erle might some day come back to her, ceased suddenly, as her thoughts of revenging herself died in the new hope that came over her.

“I’ll never see him again,” she thought, little knowing, “and I’ll beat Mr. Egerton yet! A better woman would have been a far more easily managed governess. One like me knows too much. For I’m sure—sure that he brought that girl here to put her out of the way, and his warnings to Salome and me were nothing but a blind.”

The danger she was in made her almost gay.

Quite boldly she stepped out on the veranda and looked through those shutters where that strange, hunting thing had scented her.

What was it? It had looked, with its spread-eagle arms and legs, like an ape. She would find out in the morning if there were such things here. Then she shuddered, with a quailing at even her cold heart.

Salome had thanked Heaven she was black!

Then the thing, whatever it was, only attacked white people. Could it be some dreadful, half-crazy black man, run wild in the woods?

“I can’t get a pistol,” mused Andria dryly, “but I can get a knife!” and she went quietly in to bed. The thing, whatever it was, was gone.

Bright and early she woke to a new day.

Amelia Jane, with a tea-tray, stood by her bed, and Andria, after a dazed instant, remembered where she was, and saw, too, that Amelia Jane looked tired. She was the youngest of the colored women and the stupidest, and she stared as she answered Andria’s good morning.

Fully dressed, she had lain down on her bed, her only toilet for the night having been to take out the pins from the great circle of ruddy hair that hung round her in a glorious mass. Under the servant’s wondering eyes, she laughed.

“I must have fallen asleep,” she said. “Don’t tell any one, Amelia.”

“You wasn’t awake late, was you?” the woman returned curiously.

“I don’t know. I thought I heard footsteps, Amelia, last night!”

Amelia Jane put down her tray.

“Don’t speak of ’em—they isn’t lucky!” she said. “They’s haunts, miss.”

“Do you mean ghosts?”

“Jus’ ghosts. My soul! I slep’ here in this house once. I heard them steps all night. Hurry, hurry—hunt, hunt—but I never see nothin’. Bermuda’s haunted, I tell you so.”

“Is the house called Bermuda?” asked Andria quickly.

“Yas’m. And if it isn’t haunted, why is it that they’s no footsteps heard out’n the quarters? Only in the big house.”

So the house was called Bermuda!

That was what Amelia had meant on the stairs.

Andria’s heart lightened a little, for at least it showed the servants were not in league with Egerton to deceive her.

“Nobody ever sees the ‘haunt,’ do they?” she asked.

“No’m! Sometimes ’taint here at all. Salome she say it’s nonsense—but I don’t hear it. An’ yet it ain’t never amounted to nothing, only jus’ noises.”

“Are there monkeys here, Amelia?”

Amelia Jane laughed till she had to cover her face with her apron.

“Monkeys! No’m. I been here three years, an’ I never hear tell of no monkeys. There ain’t no beasts ’tall. When you’ve had you bath’m kin I brush out your hair? It’s tangled till if you piroots round in it you’ll tear it out.”

Andria thanked her, her heart warming to the kindly voice. But when her toilet was done and she stood, fresh and fair, in front of the glass, some one knocked at the door. It was Salome, and her fat face was anxious.

“Morning, missus,” she said hastily. “I come to tell you little miss must habe gone out. I can’t see her nowhere.”

“Out! Alone?” Andria gasped, “Oh, Salome! Which way? Not down that path?”

“You clear out and look down de road, ‘Melia Jane!” commanded the housekeeper, and stopped Andria, as she would have followed.

“Don’t you say nothin’ of dat path to ‘Melia Jane,” she whispered. “She’d be faint-hearted of de place ef she got skeered. But run, missus, do; and get little miss. She didn’t know no other way to go.”

“Then you heard—last night!” cried Andria, almost running through the house, Salome at her heels.

“Heard what? Dey ain’t nothin’ to hear. Don’t you listen to tales from ‘Melia Jane ’bout haunts. Dey’s fever in dat path, dat’s all,” said the woman, lying obstinately.

Andria shot out of the house like an arrow from a bow.

Down that uncanny path, with its hot, strong scents and gaudy flowers, she ran as she had never thought she could run; her skirts caught to her knees, she leaped and stumbled and slid over the tangled vines and sharp rocks. Suddenly a gleam of white caught her eyes, and between two high rocks she saw Beryl, kneeling over something on the ground.

“Beryl,” she screamed, hoarse with fear and anger at the girl’s disobedience; “Beryl, why did you come here? Come home!”

“Hush!” said the girl softly, turning her head, “I’m all right! Come here quietly and see what I’ve found. Such a darling kitten!”

Andria, her pulses thumping and her breath gone, caught back an angry word. What did the child mean? She had noticed last evening that Salome had no dogs or cats. And then her heart contracted.

On the ground beside Beryl, playing with her hand, was a small cat—all marked with curious black rings on its yellow-white coat.

But it was no cat. Its face was square, its eyes wild, as it stopped its play at the sight of a second person. Beryl, her own strange eyes intent and masterful, began to stroke it with soft, strong fingers.

“Pussy, pussy—little, little cat!” she whispered in the thing’s small ear; and as if it knew her it lay on its back and patted her with velvet paws.

What she had seen in the night came back to the governess. Had it been a full-grown thing like this that had smelled her out on the upper veranda? Trembling, she stepped to the girl’s side.

“Beryl, put it down! Come home,” she begged, for orders, when the girl’s face was absent and obstinate, were useless. “It may have its mother somewhere, you don’t know! Come home.”

“She wouldn’t hurt me!” said Beryl, and for a moment those strange, yellow eyes met Andria’s, not so unlike the eyes of the queer, wild kitten.

“No, but she might me,” said Andria quietly, as a forlorn hope.

Beryl turned pale.

“Oh, Andria, forgive me!” she cried. “I forgot. There, little cat, run home! Or shall I take it with us and feed it?”

“No, no! Oh, come away!” with a wild horror she thought of being followed up the path by a prowling thing like she had seen the night before. Almost she stamped her foot as Beryl lingered, kissing her new-found toy. Instead of scratching, it purred and rubbed its head against her, and Andria knew that if she had touched it the thing would have clawed her eyes out. Her heartbeats, which had shaken her from breathlessness, shook her now with terror. Who could tell what moment death might not be on them?

But Beryl, putting down the kitten very gently, slipped her arm through Andria’s with quick compunction.

“Come along,” she said sweetly. “I’d forgotten this was a bad place and we weren’t to come here. Run home, little cat! See, Andria, it will follow us!”

“Yes,” said Andria, with stiff lips. “It won’t come far, I fancy.” She pushed Beryl in front of her so that if more than the kitten should follow the girl would have a chance to run, and found herself glancing every which way just as Egerton had done the morning before. To her despair Beryl turned suddenly off the path.

“Look!” she cried, “here’s the kitten again! It’s caught up with us. And here’s the dearest little pond, Andria!” She did not believe for one second in that fairy-tale of the kitten’s mother. “See it—all white sand, and so clear.”

Andria was utterly furious.

“Beryl, please come! I’m so hungry,” she said. “I believe you want me to get fever.”

“How can you!” said Beryl. “You poor dear, I’ll come now.”

And she did, hurrying with easy steps up the stony path. The kitten stayed behind, and that terrified Andria anew. She turned to follow Beryl, and her foot slipped. For a moment she fell on her knees, faint with pain; her face bent over the still water of the little pond that mirrored her clearly. The next second her heart seemed to die in her. There was more than her own face reflected in the water. Over her shoulder, leering, mouthing as if it jabbered at her, was a second face, so wild and dreadful that her throat grew shut and dry with fear. With her newborn instinct of facing an enemy, she wrenched herself round on her knees and scrambled to her feet.

The space behind her was utterly empty! Even the wild kitten was gone.

Not a rustle, a moving leaf, stirred the gorgeous shrubs anywhere, and yet she knew some one had vanished into them but now. That face that had leered at her from the water mirror had been no dream, but a dreadful reality.

“Reflection can’t lie,” she thought. “And I saw it face to face with me.” She could scarcely move as she realized how close it must have been to her to have peered over her very shoulder.

“Beryl!” She suddenly remembered the girl she had sworn to herself to take care of, and forgot her turned ankle as she raced after her. At the end of the path she almost sobbed with joy. There stood Beryl, fresh and lovely in the sunshine that flooded the open turfed lawns. Her face was quite careless and untroubled.

“I won’t tell her,” Andria thought swiftly. “She’s seen nothing.” But even there in the open ground she made her charge walk in front of her all the way to the house, for fear of what might yet be behind them.

Salome stood waiting at the door, and turned away as she saw them.

“What on earth’s the matter with Salome?” Beryl said, laughing. “Andria, she was truly pale! She was gray!”

But Andria said nothing.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE EYES OUTSIDE THE JALOUSY.

The weather changed that afternoon. A high, hot wind blew from the southwest under a gray sky; the sea thundered on the beach below the house; and as Beryl looked out listlessly, rainlike waterspouts came thrashing down.

“Hateful!” she said pettishly. “I was going out.” Andria, whose bruised foot ached, began to laugh.

“You needn’t laugh! If you do I’ll go still,” she said, with babyish wilfulness.

“It wasn’t that,” said the so-called governess; “it’s only this—do you know that we were supposed to do lessons, and there isn’t a sign of a book in the house! Not even a novel. Amelia Jane has half a Bible, and she says that’s the only book there is.”

“I believe he’s just stuck us here to mold away and die,” returned Beryl quite calmly. “He didn’t care whether I learned anything or not, in spite of his grandfatherly ways. But I’m not going to mold or die either. I like the place!” she continued coolly. “I hope he’ll never come back.”

“You won’t like it long,” muttered Andria to herself. “You won’t have a chance,” for her adventures were heavy on her mind, and it took all her will not to pour them out to this careless listener.

“I like it out, I mean! I didn’t like it indoors much.” Beryl went on, blessedly ignorant of the thoughts in her companion’s mind. “That’s rather funny about the books, but I don’t care. I wouldn’t do any more lessons if we’d a library. All I want to do is to lie under the trees and be lazy.”

“You need it, you poor baby,” said Andria pitifully. For tall and strong as the girl was, she was too thin, and the lovely outline of her pale, warm cheeks too hollow. But in Andria’s mind was that there would be few days to be out of doors in sun or shade; if things went on as now this house would not be their prison alone—their only safety would be inside its stout stone walls.

“Hurrah, here comes tea!” cried Beryl gaily. “Salome, I haven’t anything to do, and it’s raining. Couldn’t Amelia Jane go out and look for my cat?”

The tray clattered on the table. Salome had all but dropped it.

“Cat?” she said. “Cat! Dey ain’t no cats here. For the land’s sake, Miss Ber’l, what you mean?”

“Just what I said,” answered Beryl provokingly. “Why? Don’t you like cats, Salome?”

Salome opened her eyes till they looked all whites.

“Dey ain’t none on de island,” she persisted obstinately. “What you mean? You didn’t bring no cat. I didn’t see none.”

“I did, then, and I didn’t bring it either,” said Beryl, with a cheerful laugh. “The dearest little cat, Salome! I found it on the path on the shore this morning—all yellow with black spots.”

“My gracious sakes, little miss!” said the woman slowly, and Andria saw she was holding herself hard. “Don’t you come and tell ole Salome dem tales.”

“She did find a cat, Salome!” Andria interrupted. “I saw it, too. But it wasn’t like a common cat. I think it was a wild one. Why didn’t you tell me there were wildcats?”

The woman drew her breath so sharply that it was all but a sob.

“Dey ain’t—no wildcats!” she returned faintly.

“I told you so, Andria,” Beryl stuck in gaily, helping herself to tea. “I knew it was tame! It was so soft, and had such sweet fur.”

“You didn’t go for to touch it?” and almost fiercely Salome turned to the girl.

“Why not, if it was only a dream-cat, like you say?” said Beryl, with that goblin look in her queer face. “Salome, you silly woman, of course I did! I played with it for ages.”

“An’ you never seen nothin’ else? Nothin’ ’tall?” she insisted, her big chest heaving.

“No, of course not. Andria said its mother might come and eat us, but she didn’t.”

Andria’s eyes, full of meaning, caught Salome’s from behind Beryl’s shoulder. The colored woman read them like print. If one had not seen, the other had—and been silent. For an instant the black woman looked rebelliously at the white. If the new red-haired mistress meant there should be accidents Salome would have no hand in them. She moved, stiff with angry suspicion, to the front door.

“Guess I’ll lock up now,” she muttered. “Don’t want none o’ dem cats in my kitchen.”

“Salome, don’t shut up!” Beryl cried, running to the nearest window. “My cat may be out there; wait till I look. I’m going to bring the poor thing in out of the rain if it’s there.”

She stared out into the blinding white mist of wild and streaming rain. It was impossible to see through it if there had been fifty cats; against it there was almost no difference in color between the gray tree-trunks and the green leaves, so blanched was the world. Suddenly lightning passed before her eyes, short, white, and vicious through the pearl-white rain, like a striking sword. After it thunder that shook the very earth. Under cover of the deafening peal of it Andria spoke in Salome’s ear.

“Don’t tell her, don’t frighten her,” she whispered. “You and I must take care of her. Oh, Salome, I saw something!”

The woman’s face changed as if by magic. “I was suspicioning you,” she said, banging the door. “I don’t fancy dis place an’ dat’s a fact. But if you don’t, neither, I guess we’ll get over dem—all o’ dem,” she laughed savagely, but Andria caught at her black hand as at the hand of a friend. “I trust you, Salome!” she breathed.

“Fo’ the Lawd, you kin,” said the woman shortly. “But dey ain’t no time now. You wait, missus, till to-night.”

“Oh!” shrieked Beryl. “There’s my cat. I saw it. It’s looking for me. I’ll get it.”

Salome, with a bound that was ludicrous in a stout person who shook as she walked, caught the girl half out of the window. “Does you want to get killed by dat lightning?” she cried authoritatively. “I tell you dey ain’t no playing wid de sword of de Lawd in dis country. See dat!” she cried sharply.

A tall tree was struck as she spoke, and the thunder drowned the fall of it, as the rain quenched its smoking limbs. “Dey ain’t no cats worf frizzling for, I tell you.”

To Andria’s surprise Beryl turned obediently from the window. Salome, with feverish haste, shut up her fortress and lit the lamps.

“Dey’ll be good men drowned in dat wind,” she said soberly. “You pray for dem, Miss Ber’l, instead o’ chasing after no cats.”

A sudden heavy gust against the house corroborated her. The wind would be a hurricane by and by. In the noise of it the woman muttered to herself despairingly. “She see dat cat in daylight—broad daylight. Oh! my soul—and dey’ll be wind to-night. I dunno what I’m gwine do. I daresn’t tell ’em; he’d murder me just like dat if I did. I got to piroot some way out of it.” And she shook her head meaningly as Andria would have followed her from the room.

Chloe and Amelia Jane waited at dinner. Salome was absent doing other things. Strange things enough in that lonely place, far from towns and tramps. The woman was strong as a man, and she worked feverishly at her self-appointed task; piled packing-cases before the doors opening on the lower veranda, put heaps of some strange-smelling, dried herb on the verandas themselves. The top ones she never thought of, knowing nothing of Andria’s vision the night before. When she had finished her poor precautions she regarded them doubtfully enough.

“Broad daylight, and I’d been sure dey was clean gone,” she groaned. “And here it’s night, and de wind risin’. Pray dey’s grit in ole Salome yet! But I ain’t knowing just what to do. Dey tells me red-haired white women is liars, and how do I know ’bout dis one! She kin trust me sure enough, but I ain’t trying no speriments on her.”

Yet that very wind that was racking Salome’s nerves had set Andria’s at rest. There could be no prowling spies on a night like this; not even that strange being, whose leering, mocking face she scarcely dared remember, could be abroad in such a storm. The face had been barely human; animal greed and hatred had been in it, hungry fierceness in its glittering eyes as it grinned at her. She longed to go and pour out her story to Salome, but when she looked into the kitchen all was darkness.

“Salome needn’t have deserted us!” she thought, like a hurt child, and then resolutely banished all fear of their great loneliness in the inclemency of the night.

“Look out!” cried Beryl, as Andria returned to the drawing-room. “See what I’ve found. Isn’t it fun?”

She had from somewhere unearthed a long ugly dagger, very fine and sharp. On the floor she had put a row of oranges, and with unerring aim was throwing the dagger at them. She never missed; each orange as it was struck was nailed to the floor. Andria took the dagger from the orange where it stood quivering. How sharp it was! She had fairly to drag it from the polished board.

“Let me try!” and to her surprise, after the first failure, the thing was easy. Only the fear of breaking the new toy made her stop; she might have need of it.

“I found some cards, too, and a book!” Beryl cried. “Such a funny old book. Listen!” She read aloud from a battered calf octavo: “‘As sure as the turquoise brings love and the amethyst repels it, so does the opal attract misfortune and the beryl bring bad dreams.’ There, the beryl’s me! What kind of a stone is it? I never saw one.”

“It’s green,” said Andria absently; “pale-green; something the color of that wild kitten’s eyes.”

“Then look here!” exclaimed Beryl excitedly. “Is this one? It was shut up in the book. Trust me to rummage round and find things.”

She held up a tarnished gold ring, thin and old, set with a pale-green stone that glittered in the lamplight.

Andria seized it.

“It’s a beryl, certainly,” she said slowly. “I wonder whose it is!”

“It’s mine now,” said Beryl, snatching it and slipping it on her finger. “I’m going to wear it.”

“Bad dreams, the book says, and you’ve no right to it, you know,” said Andria.

“Neither has old Egerton any right to me. I’ll bring him bad dreams, too, if I can. Oh, Andria! Isn’t it pretty? I never wore a ring in my life.”

Andria looked silently at her own bare fingers where once the diamonds had felt heavy. “They didn’t bring happiness,” she said softly. “But you can wear it if you like. Where are the cards? I’ll teach you to play euchre.”

Curiously enough, all Beryl’s nervousness of the night before had vanished. She sat down calmly with her back to the uncurtained windows and bestowed her whole attention on the game. Her left hand, with the cards in it, was held high, with the ring glittering on it, so that if there had been any one to look in they could have seen it plainly. The storm made the house shake, solid as it was, and the noise of it was deafening. There could be no one abroad to-night, yet suddenly Andria seemed to stiffen in her chair.

“Beryl,” she whispered, putting down a card that was all wrong, “there’s the queerest sound in the wind! Like something sniffing at the door. Can’t you hear it?”

“I heard it ages ago,” said Beryl gaily. “Perhaps it’s my cat. Shall I let it in?”

“No! Don’t move. It’s too loud; no kitten could make it. It sounds like a horse sniffing dust and blowing it out again.”

The girl listened.

Very, very soft, in the battering wind, came another sound; a scratch, scratch, scratch at the door.

“It is my kitten! I”—with a curious look in her eyes Beryl had risen—“I must go.”

“You sha’n’t stir,” said Andria, with a sudden ugly gentleness. “You don’t know what’s outside. Come up-stairs; it isn’t safe here.” She caught Beryl’s arm and fairly pushed her from the room, catching up that lean, sharp dagger as she passed it. The instant they were over the threshold the scratching ceased, as if whatever was outside knew they had gone.

Half-way up-stairs a sudden crash as if some one had upset a heavy table stopped both girls short. Fear caught Andria by the throat; silent and dry-lipped she pushed Beryl against the wall and stood in front of her, the dagger in her hand. Had something got in up-stairs? Was she to fight for both their lives—now—on these stairs? The next second she heard Salome’s voice: “Ladies, ladies,” she called frantically, “come up out o’ dat. Oh, my soul! Dey’s smelled de white blood—de white blood!”

“Salome! I thought you’d gone to your own house. What is it?—there’s something—outside at the door.”

“Come up, come up!” The black woman ran down to them, her snowy turban askew on her frizzy hair. “Oh, Miss Holbeach, I been here six years and I never seen nothin’ like dis. Dey’s hunted you down, hunted——” her voice broke horribly.

“What?” said Beryl sharply. She broke from Andria’s hands and ran up-stairs.

Andria tore after her, and stopped short at what she saw.

Beryl was out on the veranda, staring into the darkness. Opposite her, not two yards from her face, something shone through the bar of the jalousies. Two great eyes, green as the stone she had found, glittering, ravenous, were fixed on her; but not even a shadow of the thing in whose head they shone showed against the black storm outside.

“Come in,” said Andria, paralyzed. “Come in! Oh, what is it?”

At the sound of her voice there came a snarl that made her blood cold, but the creature, whatever it was, could not loose its foothold to claw at the bars.

“It’s an animal,” said Beryl, in a queer singsong tone, “I’m not afraid of animals. Go in, or you’ll be killed.”

She walked nearer to those awful eyes, crooning softly to herself. The snarling ceased, but as Andria, in mad fear, leapt after the girl, it broke out so wildly, with such a guttural note of rage, that she screamed. The thing had got foothold! It was clawing at the bars.

CHAPTER XV.

A STRANGE POWER.

With a quick, backward sweep of her long, young arm Beryl Corselas sent Andria staggering backward, but she never looked to see Salome catch her dexterously and drag her inside the room.

Without taking her eyes from the fierce ones outside the stout, wooden shutters, the girl began to croon again and the hungry scratching of the iron claws ceased. Monotonous, scarcely rising or falling, that queer chant went on, till through it there rose a purr like a great cat’s.

Closer, closer Beryl drew to the jalousy; the horrified watchers saw her all but touch it. She stopped and gazed through the slats, straight into the wonderful eyes. Very slowly the great animal relaxed, scraping against the wood. Something heavy, yet strangely light-footed, leaped softly to the ground. The thing was gone.

Exactly as if she walked in her sleep Beryl Corselas came straight to the other two.

“I want a drink of water,” she said, very low. “That was a jaguar.”

Salome struck a light and shut the door on the awful darkness of the veranda before she brought a tumbler from the wash-stand.

“How do you know? You never saw one.” Andria’s voice was thick with shame. She had been so grand about saving Beryl; and it was Beryl who had saved her! She threw her dagger down angrily; it would have been no use at all in a struggle with a beast like that.

“I don’t know.” Beryl gulped at the water. “But I do know, somehow,” she said in her natural, every-day voice.

Salome took the tumbler from her with a curious gesture of respect.

“My soul! You saved us! Oh! my glory!” she cried hysterically. “Glory, glory!” her voice rang out between sobs and laughter. “You’s one o’ dem.”

“What do you mean?” Andria had played a small part and hated herself.

“You knows much as I knows,” said Salome sullenly. “You seen! She was de beat of ’em. Dey’s some born like dat. Oh, missy, glory be dis night!” Her chest heaved as she turned to Beryl, but the girl only walked away.

“Salome,” Andria broke out angrily, “you don’t trust me! I tell you I love the child. I have nothing to do with Mr. Egerton’s plots against her. I’ve known her ever since she was a baby.”

“Don’t never hear o’ no plots,” said Salome sharply. But at the look on Andria’s face she buried her own in her hands. “I will trust you, missus,” she whispered. “Fo’ de Lawd, ole Salome couldn’t tell ’bout you. I’m sick o’ dis life and dis yer place, dat’s true.”

“Then tell me what it all means,” commanded Andria sternly. “Why are we besieged here every night by wild beasts and worse?”

Salome caught her by the arm.

“Listen!” she cried. “I can’t tell you nothin’. I took my Bible oath”—on Amelia Jane’s poor relic of religion!—“to hole my tongue. But I took another in my mind to take care of dat child.”

“Then tell me who I saw last night!” said Andria frantically. “Whose hateful face jabbered at me this morning, down the path——”

“You done see him! My soul!” said the woman, as if hell had opened under her feet. “Den we’s gone, sure enough. Dey’s more than jaguars.”

Beryl, as if she listened to something very far off, had drawn to the other end of the room. She stood, a tense white figure, deaf to all other sounds but those. Andria pointed to her dumbly.

“Don’t say anything,” she breathed. “She is afraid of people, never of animals. At the convent she once saved a sister from an ox that turned on her——”

“Dey’s born so, I tell you,” Salome returned, with a kind of pride.

“Salome, if you don’t speak out to me I’ll go mad,” Andria said desperately. “What can I do if I don’t know what it all means?”

“I can’t tell you nothin’,” answered Salome slowly. “I couldn’t get clear if I did. And you knows all I knows now. I don’t know no more. Black people in the house, no one comes—white women! You seen to-night.”

“Do you mean the place is safe for black people?”

“De white blood draws ’em,” she answered in a whisper that thrilled.

“But men; Mr. Egerton——”

“When he comes back you see. He ain’t going to stay long. He sleep up, up in de roof, last time he come.”

“And he brought two women here!” Every drop of Andria’s blood recoiled.

“Dat’s what I can’t understand,” said Salome eagerly. “He say, ‘Salome, you take care on ’em!’ And I seem to feel he don’t mean it.”

“He can’t,” said Andria simply. “Oh! Salome, can’t we get away? Isn’t there any one on all this island but us? Isn’t there a village—boats?”

“If dey is dey’s behind miles o’ bush and scrub dat we can’t scrape through,” Salome returned, very low. “Boats, if you means getting away by de sea, dey ain’t none, ’less we make ’em. I never see no living soul since I been here—but what you see to-night!”

“But why are you here?”

“’Cause he brought me. He tell me he take me to good place in Bermuda, and I came here. Oh, missus! I’m not old—but I’m wore out with misery.”

“But you’re not a slave! Why did you stay?”

“Niggers has no choice,” she answered darkly. And something told Andria there was a black story that Salome would not tell. “By and by he bring Chloe an’ Amelia Jane. He tell dem dis is Bermuda. And dey never fret, dey only caring to eat and save deir wages. De Lawd knows if we ever get away from here. Don’t you ’spose I never tried, ’cause dat’s what I did try. But—I ain’t gone yet!”

“I’ll make him let us go!”

Salome clutched her, really ashy with terror.

“You never say nothin’, or dey’s no more o’ dis world for me. You mind now. I never tell you nothin’; you never tell me nothin’; you see and I sees; and we beat them if we can. Dey’s here, dey’s always been here, but when dey ain’t no one but niggers in de house dey goes. Dey get master yet,” she said savagely, “for all he dares ’em.”

“But you told me there were no animals—where did that thing come from?”

“Sometimes I think dey spring out o’ de earth. I don’t know. But dey’s worse—you tell me he jabbers at you dis morning,” interrupting herself, “an’ she’s afraid of people! If he’s going round in de daylight like dat, an’ she’s afraid, he’ll get her sure!”

“But who is he?”

“Dat’s what I don’t know. But he climbs and—Miss Holbeach, it ain’t no jaguar dat chokes de life out o’ my lambs and don’t tear no flesh nor skin!”

Andria’s flesh crawled at the slow words. In the silence the storm outside was like the end of the world. The battering of the wind, the crash of falling trees, the roar of the rain covered the low voices of the two women. In the uproar Beryl, like a statue that lived and listened, drew her breath long and slow. Suddenly she spoke, without turning.

“There are more than that one, and they’re hunting and yapping like dogs. I wish I could see them! But it’s too dark.”

“Are they hunting us?” cried Andria, shuddering. Already she seemed to feel the ripping claws, the crunching teeth of the great beast outside.

“Not me!” said Beryl dreamily.

Salome watched her with awestruck eyes.

“If we dies, we dies,” she said hardly. “Better lie down on dem beds an’ rest. Dey ain’t got in yet. Pray de Lawd we ain’t going to be de meat at a jaguar wedding dis night!”

With the stoical courage born of long endurance of fear she lay down on a rug. Andria, in sheer despair, sat down silently. And in the midst of the storm she seemed to hear what Beryl was hearing—a wild snarling, a medley of quick cries—and set her teeth. Any minute, through any door, a square, savage head might show itself with death in its green eyes. She looked at Beryl.

The girl was curled up on her bed like a kitten, sound asleep.

Black woman and white looked at each other, then with one consent sat up and kept their useless, terrified watch till the lamp burned dim. The wind had fallen, the horrid outcry in the garden had ceased, and, lulled by the quiet, the two slept in their chairs, worn out.

As the dawn flushed in the east the girl on the bed sat up, looked at the two weary figures, the dying lamp, and like a ghost stole by them. When the clear sunlight at last roused them she had not come back.

CHAPTER XVI.

IN THE WOODS OF PARADISE.

“Drink to the men that were broken!

They were better men than you.”

Scorching morning sun on a barren point of rock and sand, and on great waves that thudded and broke emerald-green and white on the wet beach; and nothing else to tell of the past night’s storm.

Nothing, unless if any one had shaded their eyes to gaze at the beach, where the hot air quivered, they might have seen a huddled thing lying there just out of the reach of the waves; a thing that last night had been a man, and to-day—motionless, lax, it seemed but the body that some one had cast aside. If something did move in the bushes, it did not disturb that quiet sleeper in the sun.

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

Brian Heriot had been put into the Guards at twenty, had lived as gaily as if money grew on every bush, till the crash came and undeceived him. His father died without a will, and his elder brothers quietly threw him over. The new Lord Heriot was a Plymouth brother and a philanthropist; he had no money to waste on idle young butterflies in the Guards. The Honorable Brian Heriot grinned without much mirth when he realized his position. He disgusted his dear friends by calmly taking what little money he had to pay his debts, and then, without a word to any one, quietly “went under.” His old haunts knew him no more; people forgot him, no one troubling to remember that if Lord Heriot was a pious prig, Brian, his brother, was a born adventurer.

Strange lands, strange occupations knew him. He grew very tanned, very handsome, with a look in his face that made women turn their heads as he passed. But he made no money, only kept body and soul together; a rolling stone that yet did not go down-hill. For he kept his soft speech and manner, his good heart that hated cruelty and a lie. Somehow he had drifted to Fayal, and there being penniless, if cheerful, had shipped on a small coasting-vessel that gathered cargo for the European steamers.

That was a week ago. This morning there was neither vessel, cargo, nor crew; nothing but Brian Heriot washed ashore almost dead. He had swum till he could swim no more; that was all he knew. That, and a great crashing of water, and utter darkness. But the very wave that had stunned him had cast him high and dry like a bit of driftwood on the sandy point where he lay.

As the sun warmed him he stirred, ever so faintly.

Had something touched him? Stooped over him with clammy fingers on his bare throat? He tried to open his eyes, but he saw only one fleeting shimmer of sun on water before they closed again. There was a deadly heaviness in his limbs, an utter indifference in his brain; he did not know whether he was alive or dead, and did not care. Presently he knew he was dreaming.

He thought he was lying in hot, hot sun, on hotter sand, and turned away from the hungry sea that pounded in his ears. And just before his eyes stood a girl; a tall girl in white, with a great veil of dusky hair streaming over her. Round her feet played two jaguar cubs, and in her arms was a third, that she cuddled and crooned to as if it were a child. Step by step she came close to him, and over her shoulder there peered from the bushes another face that leered and laughed as if in malice. A dreadful fright for the girl came over Brian Heriot, but in his nightmare he could not stir. He tried to shout, and the dream went. Something wet and cool on his head roused him; a shadow that was heaven came between him and the sun; a girl’s voice scolded something that seemed to be running and jumping over him.

With an effort that racked every bone Brian Heriot sat up, and stared about him. Half his dream was true. He was on a beach, a wet handkerchief was bound on his head, but there was no one there.

“Please come back!” he said. “I won’t hurt you,” and then laughed ruefully. Sick and dizzy, with a cut head and a wrenched ankle, he certainly would not hurt any one. “Oh, do come back!” he cried again, with a kind of vexed impatience, and wished he could remember some Portuguese instead of this useless English.

But even as he spoke the bushes parted, and a girl slipped out of them. She stood looking at him with great eyes almost as yellow as topaz, and he saw the color come and go in her creamy cheeks.

“I thought you were Mr. Egerton at first,” she said slowly, almost sullenly. “Did you come with him? Is he back?”

Ill and exhausted as he was, the incongruity of the thing made him stare. Where had he got to, that a girl played with jaguar cubs and spoke in English?

“I don’t know any one named Egerton,” he said, propping himself up on one arm. “My name’s Heriot.”

“How did you get here? You really mean you don’t know him?”

“I mean I never heard of him,” he answered stupidly. “I got here because my ship was wrecked last night. If you hadn’t waked me I think I should have had a touch of sun.”

“You must get out of it,” said the girl quickly. She twisted her hair into a knot, as if she had just remembered it. As she did so a ring on her finger glittered green, and at the sight of it something in the bushes drew back sharply.

At the rustle she bounded like a frightened child closer to the man in the sand, whose eyes were so blue in his handsome face, handsome in spite of blood-stains.

“Did you see anything besides me, a little while ago?” she whispered. “Quick, tell me!”

“I thought I saw a man,” he answered, surprised. “But I wasn’t myself; I don’t know.”

She put her hand on his shoulder, and to his amaze he felt it tremble.

“So did I!” she whispered, lower still. “Get up. I’ll help you. I’ll take you with me. But,” suspiciously, “you mean what you say? Mr. Egerton didn’t send you?”

“No one sent me.” He forgot she was a girl, and spoke with rough truth as to a man. “God knows you haven’t much choice when you’re washed overboard. I didn’t mean to come. Why should I lie about it?”

“Most people,” she said composedly, “lie. But”—she stopped, listened—“come, come away!” she cried. “I’m afraid here.”

“You can’t be afraid of much,” he answered, full of wonder. “I saw you playing with jaguar cubs just now, unless I dreamed it.”

The girl laughed. That rough denial of Egerton had somehow made her trust the man. “Those were my cats. I’m not afraid of animals. I hate people, though, except Andria.”

“By George!” thought Heriot, “I’d rather face ten men than one jaguar. Who is the girl? And who’s Andria? I knew one Andria, but——” He smiled at the idea; it could not be she!

“You don’t know anything about animals.” She had read his face with a queer anger. Turning from him, she began to croon, very low, and at a call a yellow, white, black-spotted kitten came out of the bushes. But it only rubbed against her skirt and bounded away. Beryl Corselas grew pale.

“Come,” she said, and took his hand. “Can you walk?”

“Yes.” He got on his feet and gritted his teeth with the pain in his ankle. “Is it far?”

“Yes; I don’t know,” she said absently, staring round her. Who was calling the cats that they would not stay with her? What horrible face had she seen for one instant through the bushes? “Don’t let go my hand!” she said suddenly, childishly; and Heriot, for all his pain, saw that this girl who played with jaguars was frightened.

But as he went with her up what was surely a path, though not worn by shod feet, the feeling that it was all a dream came over him again. If it had not been for the pain in his foot he might have been Adam walking with Eve in Eden for the loneliness and the beauty of the place. The wet scrub was a mass of flowers, gorgeous butterflies swam through thickets of white and rose heaths, strange blossoms flaunted in his face. And never in all his days had he seen a beauty so strange as that of the girl who led him by the hand. Yet for all its unlined youth the face was pathetic, tragic; the dull rose lips were lips that had tasted grief.

“What do you mean by saying you’re afraid of people?” he said, the pain in his ankle making him talk, for fear he should groan.

“Animals are simple; I understand them,” she returned, without slackening her pace. “People all have an animal in them. I see it in their faces, but an animal turned bad. Mother Felicitas was a white wolf.”

“You are not afraid of me?” He was afraid himself of her answer.

“No!” she answered carelessly. “No more than I would be of a dog. Come on!”

Heriot had stopped. He leaned against a tree, faint with pain. He would cheerfully have given a thousand pounds for a drink.

“You’ll have to wait,” he said ruefully. “I mean I will. There’s something wrong with my foot.”

With feverish haste the girl picked up a stick that lay on the path and shoved it into his hand. “It’s green, it won’t break. Use it for a walking-stick,” she ordered. “And try to hurry. Don’t you know there’s something following us?”

He had not heard a sound.

“What sort of thing?”

“Something dumb,” she whispered, “that leers and jabbers, and I can’t manage it, for I’m afraid.”

Heriot put his hand in his trousers pocket. His pistol was gone.

“Walk ahead,” he said, setting his teeth. And as she obeyed he heard behind him a faint rustling that grew no nearer. He limped on in purgatory from the heat and his foot. His head swam as the sweat poured off him. If it had not been for the terror of the girl with him he would have sat down and waited for what was following them rather than have walked another step.

Suddenly she cried out, and, reaching back for his hand, fairly dragged him after her. They were out of the scrub, standing at the edge of a great, open meadow, with trees scattered over it. As in a dream he saw a white house, quite near; nearer still a black woman and a white running to them. He was so dizzy that he reeled and nearly pulled the girl backward as she clutched his hand.

“Beryl!” cried a voice high and sweet. “Oh, Beryl, where have you been—who’s that?” asked Andria, with a quick note of startled surprise.

The whole world swam before Mr. Heriot’s eyes. He tried to steady himself, to speak.

“Mrs. Erle,” he began, quite calmly, and fainted dead away on the grass at Andria’s feet.

CHAPTER XVII.

OLD SINS AWAKENED.

Andria’s heart contracted where she sat in the pleasant, green-shaded room. The three colored women had made nothing of carrying the unconscious man into an unused room in the upper story of the servants’ quarters; Salome’s eyes had told Andria he must not be taken into the big house. And there in the spotless bareness of the darkened chamber Andria had sat ever since, like a woman who sees a ghost, waiting for this man who knew her to come to his senses.

For he knew her quite well. He had been a friend of Raimond Erle’s, had believed like the rest of London that the woman who was called “the lovely Andria” had been the true cause of his financial ruin. When he found what she was doing here, would he warn Beryl what a wicked woman she was who masqueraded as a governess and guardian?

She lifted her bowed head to look at him, and saw he had wakened from the heavy sleep that had come on him after his fainting-fit.

“Mrs. Erle,” he said again stupidly.

She walked over to him swiftly.

“I’m not Mrs. Erle; I never was!” she said, with a kind of passion. “My name is Andria Heathcote, but they call me Holbeach here.”

“But——”

“I know,” she cut him short. “I have begun again. I am Beryl’s governess, the girl who brought you home. She knows my real name, but I told her I called myself Holbeach for reasons of my own.”

“Governess!” he said, staring.

“I’m not fit, you think!” she said bitterly.

“I would not say so,” said the man slowly, and the blood came to his face.

“You think I’m bad—an—adventuress——”

“I think you ruined Raimond Erle,” he answered bluntly.

With a queer gesture she put her hand to her heart as if it hurt her. This man was of the world, would judge as the world; and he could tell.

“I——” She could not finish. A man who did not know her would have been a rock of defense, to whom she could have told everything. This man would never believe she was not in Egerton’s pay, to get rid of Beryl Corselas. He would remember the evil places, the evil company he had seen her in; would think it right to destroy Beryl’s faith in the only soul she trusted.

No! Let him think this was an ordinary house, she masquerading as an ordinary governess. Salome said it would be weeks before he could walk; let him stay here in this secluded room, where no noises would wake him. He was only another burden, not a help.

“Mr. Heriot,” she said quietly, “you will do as you like, of course, about airing what you know of me. But if you will wait you will see perhaps that I’m not all bad—not what you may think. Don’t tell Beryl that I was Andria Erle till you see reason to mistrust me,” and even while she spoke she knew he would see reason enough as soon as Beryl’s careless, indifferent tongue told the queer story of Egerton and the happenings in this evil house. No sane person would believe that if such things were possible in this every-day world the woman Egerton paid was not on his side in them. And what Egerton’s side was did not puzzle Andria, if it did Salome.

“I don’t go about blackmailing people,” said Heriot coldly. “Don’t look so nervous.”

“But you don’t think I ought to be in the house with any girl,” she said quietly, and he could not see the bitterness in her face.

“If you ask me,” unwillingly, “no! But God knows I can’t throw the first stone at you, especially when you take me in and nurse me,” but the old dislike of her and her kind was in his voice as he spoke.

“Then try and think kindly of me,” she broke out, and there were tears in the eyes he had always seen so hard. “I have begun again; I’ve put all that behind me.” With a gesture of loathing he understood.

“My dear lady,” he returned quickly, “don’t plead like that! It is no business of mine what you were. I see you here as Miss Holbeach, and—as for the girl, I am not her keeper.”

“No, but I am!” she retorted, for his tone hurt unbearably. “And keep her I will. I will send your dinner now,” she said, with a change of manner that said more for her self-control than her honesty; “it is nearly six o’clock; you must be starving.”

“Tell me,” said Heriot quickly, “who is the child? What did she mean this morning by saying she was frightened?”

He was not prepared for the look on Mrs. Erle’s face.

“Frightened!” she stammered. “What of—did she say? Not of those horrible cats?”

“If you mean jaguar cubs, she was playing with them. No; some one dumb, she said, who leered and mouthed at her—and I thought I saw a queer face myself, too!”

Involuntarily Andria did the worst thing possible.

“You were hurt and half-senseless,” she returned coolly. “You imagined you saw what the child romanced about.”

But he had seen her dismayed and confounded face, and knew she lied.

“That woman here!” he thought, as she left the room, shutting his eyes and seeing her as he had seen her in Raimond Erle’s house, covered with diamonds, surrounded by the worst men in town. “And with that innocent, fairy-tale sort of child and her queer pets. Why did she lie to me just now? And why are either of them here? This must be Flores or Corvo; one of the Azores, anyhow! And what is she about to let things frighten the girl?”

The whole thing made him thoughtful. Were there only the governess and the girl—where were the master and mistress? Intuitively the man felt there was something wrong. With a resistless impulse to see at least where he was, he managed to drag himself over to the window. Through the half-open jalousy he saw a small, stone courtyard, strong as a prison, shaded by a high building from the sinking sun. And as he stared voices floated up to him.

“Salome, she saw—you know something that jabbered at her! She told him. What shall we do?”

“Why’d she tell him?” The second voice was richer, more guttural. “Oh, my glory, missus! Mr. Egerton——” and the rest was in a whisper.

“I know. This man won’t help us, Salome!”

“No! An’ if Mr. Egerton he come back and find him here, de onliest thing dat’ll happen is de Death Trap.”

“What do you mean?” But the voice was not surprised, only appalled.

“Pray he don’t find out. Best keep Miss Ber’l away from him. If she tells him things, an’ he sees—he’ll go out fur to fight! And you knows, missus,” earnestly, “he might have friends. Dey’d be coming round asking for him. Onless you kin trust him to help us?” with a searching accent that was an entreaty.

“He’ll never help us. He’ll be against us, not for us,” bitterly. “You daren’t tell, Salome?”

“Den if he won’t help us, de sooner he goes de better. I can’t tell. Ain’t nothin’ to me, one white man! An’ if Mr. Egerton finds people spyin’ round here, it’s de end of me, sure!”

“He can’t hear anything up there?”

“No! No more’n ’Melia Jane does. Onless little miss screams!”

“She sha’n’t scream!”

Heriot drew away from the window, but not so far that he did not see Andria Erle cross the courtyard with a light, quick step that went ill with the grim sound in her voice.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DOUBTING THOMAS.

Mr. Heriot, to his disgust, was extremely ill after that rash journey to the window.

For a fortnight he had fever, and was nursed untiringly by Salome, silent as a statue. When he had mended enough to be left alone and could walk about his room, he discovered he was to all intents a prisoner. His stout nurse had calmly locked the door on him to keep him out of mischief.

“Serves me right for spying on them!” he thought, ashamed and angry, standing at the window, as he had done that first evening. “But, all the same, I think there’s some devilment going on here—hello!” he pushed the jalousy from him and leaned out.

Beryl Corselas, idle and listless, stood in the courtyard alone. He had never seen her since she had brought him from the shore, and her beauty, that was so young and so pathetic, struck him afresh.

“Are you better?” she cried, waving her hand to him. “Why don’t you come out?”

“I can’t,” he answered calmly. “Salome has locked me in.”

“Wait,” said the girl promptly. She ran across the yard, and he heard her light feet on the stair outside.

“You were locked in!” she cried, opening the door and standing there, tall and lovely, her dark hair no longer hanging round her and her white dress immaculate, instead of being soaked with dew. “How funny!”

“Isn’t it?” returned Heriot gravely. He led the way out, limping; he had no notion that Mrs. Erle should find her charge in his room.

“Everything’s funny here, though,” the girl said thoughtfully. “I’m getting used to it. But even Andria has got queer since you came. She just sits and thinks, and she won’t let me out of her sight. She has a headache to-day, poor Andria! And Salome and the others are busy washing. This is the way, out this door.”

She led him into the house through the empty kitchen, and at the voices, and laughter that came from the wash-tubs the man felt he must be a fool with his suspicions. Everything here was ordinary. Was he thinking all sorts of nonsense because he had heard a conversation not meant for him?

In the drawing-room he was amazed at the luxury round him; the silk cushions and gorgeous embroideries that were so strange in this corner of the Azores.

His companion made him sit down, and seated herself on the floor. She looked up at him, her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands, and for the first time he saw what a curious face she had.

There was something almost vacant in it, and yet it was not a stupid face, only utterly indifferent. The eyes that met his were startling in their strangeness, the irises raying out a tawny golden-yellow, while the eyebrows and lashes were like ink. The girl’s lips were a thrilling crimson, and yet the mouth bore a look of suppression, as if too early it had been acquainted with grief.

“Yes,” she said, with a sudden laugh that startled him, “it is queer here. I am queer myself.”

Heriot smiled, though he was taken aback.

“You’re a child,” he said calmly; “you haven’t found yourself yet.”

“Me? I never was a child,” she said, and her eyes darkened as if some inward flame had been extinguished. “No one who’s been Beryl Corselas all her life could ever be a child.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the convent, and Mother Felicitas,” she said somberly, “and Andria and me. If Andria had not gone away it might have been better.”

She looked straight at him, and something in his look reminded her of Andria. His blue eyes had the same look of self-reliance. His good looks did not strike her at all; the golden-brown hair and mustache and the debonair face that had turned many a woman’s head never touched Beryl Corselas one whit. He looked kind and strong, and she liked him. That was all. Yet Andria could have told her that in his day Heriot had been the handsomest, most spoiled man in London.

“Do you mean Miss Holbeach,” he asked, with perceptible hesitation and utter surprise, “was ever in a convent?”

Beryl nodded.

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “It’s all very queer. If you read it in a book you wouldn’t believe it. And that reminds me,” she went on, laughing, “Andria was brought here to teach me, and there isn’t a book in the house but that funny, old one on the floor there. Mr. Egerton couldn’t have really cared whether we did lessons or not.”

“Begin at the beginning,” said Heriot, with the soft voice women had found so sweet. “I can’t understand, you know.”

But when she had reeled out the whole extraordinary tale he leaned back and whistled softly.

Egerton, whoever he was, must know something of Beryl Corselas’ history and want her out of the way. No better place could have been found for a superfluous girl to live than this unknown nook in the Azores. And no other kind of woman than the late Mrs. Erle could have been got to take pay for accompanying a kidnaped girl. There was probably very little mystery in the affair to her; she must know something from those far-away convent days about the history of Beryl Corselas; which might also explain why it had been convenient to get her here, too, in addition to being a pliant tool in the hands of a clever man. And that the girl had an affection for her was another reason. Heriot knew the power of a woman over a girl who idolizes her. That the whole thing had been blind chance, he never thought for an instant.

“Why do you think he brought you here?”—he kept his interest out of his voice.

“I think,” she answered calmly, “to be eaten up. And so does Andria. But Salome says he made her swear to take care of us. And he did warn us himself, of course; but I think that was for show, and so does Andria.”

“Eaten up!” Mr. Heriot gasped. He began to wonder if the girl were queer in the head.

Beryl nodded.

“You don’t know. You don’t sleep in the house,” she returned. “And, anyhow, it’s all right now, for they know me.”

“Who?”

“The two old jaguars,” she said calmly, “and their kittens. You saw their kittens this morning.”

“Know you! Jaguars!” This was worse and worse. The girl was stark mad. If he had not seen her with the cubs he would have thought it a lie from the word go.

“Yes, they do!” she asserted pettishly. “I sing—like this—and they come. I can make them go away, too. Even Andria is getting to know that I can.”

She sat upright and began the queer croon he had heard once before, but this time he recognized it. It was a snake-charmer’s song, wordless; a thing to make the flesh crawl on the bones.

“Where did you learn it?” he asked, cutting her short. He was not blood-brother to jaguars, and had no wish to have them called in the open windows.

“I’ve always known it: I never learned it. I can do anything with animals. Andria says mother must have been a dompteuse—a lion-tamer, you know.”

“It does go from mother to daughter, they say,” he returned rather faintly. He wondered if this Egerton were, perhaps, her father, and then—but no man could be so cold-bloodedly cruel as that! “There ought not to be wild animals here,” he said out of his thoughts. “Are these jaguars wild?”

Every vestige of animation left the girl’s face.

“No!” she breathed more than spoke. “And that’s the only thing that frightens me. They’re trained; they have a master, and they obey him. Do you remember I saw a face that morning? Well,” as he nodded, “I think they are his. I think he tries to set them on to kill us, and I’ve managed them so far. If I could only get them to like me best; they would obey me like dogs; but sometimes I can’t get them to come to me at all. Andria is afraid to let me play with them. One night I went out, but she came after me and dragged me in. There was nearly dreadful work that time; I could hardly keep them off her—the cubs, I mean. If the old ones had been there she would have been killed.”

“Then she does try to take care of you!” the words escaped him, to his instant shame.

“Andria? She loves me! She came out to me when they might have torn her up. But she isn’t afraid of that thing that hunts with them. It climbs up the jalousies, and hurries round the house all night, like a dried-up monkey—only I know it’s a man!”

“Has she seen it?”

“I don’t know. But I have, and I’m afraid of it. And Andria gets wild if I talk of it. She says it’s all a dream.”

“It’s a damned unpleasant one, then!” thought Heriot, utterly at sea. If Egerton meant to do away with both women, the lovely Andria was a fool to be here. If only Beryl was to be got rid of, how was Mrs. Erle to save herself? As he thought of her she came into the room. She looked paler and more girlish than he had ever dreamed she could look; her red-brown hair was coiled simply round her head, and her plain, white gown was as strange on her as the absence of her rings from her rose-white hands.

“Oh!”—she stopped at the sight of him—“Mr. Heriot, how did you—that is,” lamely, “I’m glad you are better!”

“I don’t think you are, Mrs. Erle,” said Heriot’s blue eyes. Somehow, the very sight of her had strengthened the mistrust that was beginning to weaken.

“I managed to escape my stern jailer,” he said lightly. “I suppose she thought my fever was catching, for she locked me in.”

Andria turned scarlet. He saw quite well who had instructed Salome. She sat down quite composedly, though she did not look at him.

“Beryl, tell Salome we want tea, will you?” she said, and, as the door closed on the girl, turned to Heriot. “It was I who had you locked in,” she said hardly; “I was afraid you might be tempted out and make your fever worse.”

“You were very kind,” the irony in his voice barely visible. “But I may as well tell you that Miss Corselas has told me all about this queer business.”

“And you think I am paid by Mr. Egerton to get rid of her?” she said, without a flicker of her eyes. “I don’t think I am—yet! But I may be.”

“I won’t let you do it,” he answered calmly.

“Neither you nor any one else has a right to say that to me,” she said, very low. “Because you know my past is no reason I am all bad. And if I suspect Mr. Egerton a hundred times over, I must remember that he warned me to keep her out of danger. If he had meant her to run into it he would have held his tongue.”

“He warned you, perhaps!” he was behaving like a cad, and he knew it. But he could not believe in the late Mrs. Erle.

“He knows nothing of me, and cares less.”

“Why don’t you take the girl away from here, if you care for her?”

“How? You forget I don’t even know where we are. Do you?”

Heriot winced.

“No,” he said unwillingly; “either Flores or Corvo, in the Azores, but in an uninhabited part of either.”

“And I am to drag a delicate girl like that through miles of scrub, with no money if I do get to a town? If you think I knew what sort of place I was coming to you are mistaken. He told me this was Bermuda.”

“Bermuda!”

She nodded.

“And I would think he meant us to live and die here if he had not said he would come back and take me away if I did not like it.”

“Did he say he would take the girl?” he asked sharply.

“I—no!” she stammered. “I suppose he meant it.”

“Yet you ask me to believe you know nothing of his plans?” he asked politely. “Do you know, Mrs. Erle, I have a great mind to help that poor child away myself?”

Quick as light she had risen and stood looking down on him, her face as hard and brazen as that Andria Erle’s whom he had despised, all its new-found purity gone.

“And do you think I would let you?” Her voice was soft as usual, but for once it was not gentle. “Why should I hand her over to any man, to suffer, perhaps, as I’ve suffered? Believe me or not as you like, but I will take care of her, against you and ten like you—against Egerton himself, when he comes!”

“You couldn’t, if it came to main strength.”

“Could you?”—she pointed to his foot that was still bandaged. He felt her contemptuous eyes on his body that was thin and shaken with fever. “And have you money that you could send her to England and take care of her? Supposing she and you ever got out of the scrub!

“This is my house to all purposes. If I told the black women to put you out to-night they would do it. And I suppose you know what would come to you then! You can believe in me or not, as you like,” she said, with sudden quietude, “but you cannot dictate terms to me, or threaten me.”

For a long minute there was utter silence in the room. Then Heriot, very white about the mouth, rose.

“I have to beg your pardon,” he said. “You are quite right. I am in your debt.”

But as he turned to go back to his old quarters and get away from this woman, she saw that she had only made him distrust her more determinedly.

CHAPTER XIX.

TRUSTED TOO LATE.

To Heriot’s utter surprise, Salome at seven o’clock brought him a message that the ladies were expecting him at dinner. It occurred to him suddenly that second thoughts had convinced the late Mrs. Erle that a man who had been able to come to her secluded retreat would be able to get away from it, and that the strange disappearance of even an orphan girl might be a thing to report to the police. To be the jailer of a kidnaped damsel would not add glory to the record of any woman.

Before Beryl neither of the two betrayed their private position. Andria was quiet, that was all. She let Heriot talk to the girl as freely as he liked, and, in spite of his prejudice, he saw that she never tried to stop any disclosures of the terror that haunted them at night.

It was only when dinner was over that he saw her expression change. A quick remembrance had come to her. The servants had gone to bed; she dared not let even her enemy, who might at any minute betray Beryl’s faith in her, cross that courtyard in the dark.

Walls were no obstacles to the evening visitors at the house; she had a quick, sickening vision of a snarling pounce, a sound of worrying, and then a scream and a crunching and tearing of flesh. And in the vision, too, something that squatted on the wall and hounded on its dreadful servants.

“Mr. Heriot,” she had risen abruptly from the comfortable chair where her thoughts had been a torment that even Heriot might have pitied, thoughts of old days that had come back to her as if risen with this man from the dead, “Mr. Heriot, it’s dark! Do you know you can’t go back to your rooms?”

“I never meant to,” he answered quietly. “Did you think that, after hearing all I have, I was going to leave you two alone to face the night?”

To his surprise, it was Beryl who bestowed a somber glance on him; there was a queer relief on Andria’s face.

“You ought to have gone!” the girl cried. “You will only be a trouble here.”

“I’ll try not to be,” he laughed, in spite of himself. “I can sleep quite well on this sofa.”

“If you sleep anywhere!”

“She’s right,” said Andria. “It will be worse if those beasts smell you out. You should have gone.”

But, though she hated him for his unkindness, she was glad of his company. Even an extra dog would have been welcome in that house.

“Let us hope they won’t scent me.” He was only half in earnest, thinking they exaggerated, as women do.

“I can manage them,” said Beryl softly. “They’re tame, really,” and, without reason, Heriot’s heart thrilled with pride at the fearless, almost careless, voice.

It was torture to Andria to sit in the room with the man who knew her history and despised her for it. It brought back those London nights with the supper-room windows open on a moonlit garden, when Andria Erle, in satin and diamonds, had fleeted time carelessly, reckless of what men thought of her. She cared now. She would have given all her beauty to have seen respect in Heriot’s eyes, casual acquaintance though he was. And the very way he turned his sentences brought back Raimond, haggard, brown-eyed, gentlemanly, with that way he had of smiling.

In spite of herself her heart cried out for the man who had been her all. To shake off her thoughts she rose as soon as she dared, and carried Beryl off to bed.

Heriot, left alone, remembered something.

Salome, at a word from Andria, had produced cigars. He rummaged about and found them on a side table. They were Egerton’s, but Heriot was in no mood to be particular. He had had nothing to smoke in the three weeks he had been in this queer place.

He lit a perfecto and leaned back in sweet content as the blue smoke curled upward. For a little while he forgot everything but the joy of his smoke, and then the close heat of the room annoyed him. He limped over to a window and unbarred it, but hardly a breath came in. Without a thought of the tales of jaguars or their strange master, Heriot opened the veranda jalousies and sniffed the air of the gorgeous night.

A honey-colored moon swam in the sky, even the colors of the flowers in the garden were visible, and the scent of oleander-blossoms rose like incense in his nostrils. With a sigh of content, he turned back into the room and picked up the only book it contained. The yellow pages opened of their own accord at a worn passage, and as he read it he wondered.

“As sure as the turquoise attracts love and the amethyst repels it, so does the beryl bring bad dreams.”

He turned to the title-page.

“Jewels—Their Verye Majicke Vertue,” he saw in thick, old lettering, and went back to the passage he was reading.

“This is a queer Beryl; I wonder if she will bring bad dreams,” he thought sleepily, as his cigar burned out. Too lazy to move, he dozed in his chair, while the lamps burned low and flickered in the rising breeze.

A pleasant sound, hurrying, pattering, like heavy rain on a roof, soothed him dreamily.

His head rested more heavily on the silk cushions of his deep chair; he still saw the dimly lighted room, but mistily, as in a dream.

His eyelids fell at last, his long lashes rested on his brown cheek.

The hurrying patter outside ceased.

If any one looked with wild incredulity through the open jalousy Heriot did not see them; if softly and soundlessly something slipped in and crept behind his chair he did not hear, or know what curved, crooked fingers itched to clutch at his throat, and yet were kept from it by a cunning mind.

The man was asleep; would stay asleep till—something woke him.

A minute later Heriot opened his eyes, and leaped to his feet as one who shakes off a dream at a half-heard sound.

Had he seen, for one second, a face, jeering and malicious, glance back at him from the door into the passage? And did he see that door closing softly now? And did he hear quite close, and coming nearer, quick, yelping whines, as of beasts hunting?

Heriot rushed to the open jalousy, tore it to him and barred it; shut and locked the window into the room. And not an instant too soon, for something soft, yet tremendously heavy, had hurled itself against his jalousy; but the good wood held.

“The jaguars! It was true, then,” he thought almost unconsciously, for there was no time for thinking when something worse than a jaguar was on its way to those two defenseless women up-stairs. Regardless of his lameness, he raced up-stairs.

There were lights everywhere, and perfect silence everywhere, too. Had he dreamed that evil, fleering face—that misshapen body, with its crooked claws of hands?

A scream, so wild and dreadful in that lonely house that it turned his blood to fire, answered him. Yet the thrilling note of it was rage—not fear!

“All right!” he shouted; “I’m coming!” and ran in the direction of the sound.

Andria Erle, white as ashes, her teeth showing as her lips curled back from them, was half-facing him, as she threw Beryl back through a half-open door. As Heriot ran to her she banged it to, and shut it on the girl; and then he saw what sickened him. There were hands like claws clasped round Mrs. Erle’s bare throat, and a monster that bit buried in the nape of her lovely neck.

“Bolt the door, Beryl—quick!” her voice came choked. “Never mind—me!”

Heriot’s arms shot over her shoulder as she spoke. But he missed the ghastly thing that clung around her. He jumped to drag it off her, but it eluded him; with the noiseless spring of a cat it had dropped to the ground and vanished somewhere in the winding passage.

Andria panted desperately.

“Beryl is all right,” she said. “He can’t get at her. Beryl, can you let us in?”

“Yes. Oh, Andria!” in anguish, “no! The bolt’s stuck.”

“Don’t move it, then.” Andria was trembling from head to foot. “Lock your window. Is Salome there?”

“Yes, missus! Wait, we’ll get you in.”

“No!” with authority. “I’m all right; Mr. Heriot’s here. Don’t open that door, Salome, till I tell you to. Promise!”

“I can’t open it,” said the black woman with despair. “Oh, Miss Holbeach! Run somewhere—quick! He’s in; he’ll let dem in!”

Andria clutched Heriot’s arm.

“She’s right!” she cried. “Come! See my room. I left a light there, and now it’s dark!”

“I’ll break the crazy brute’s neck!” said Heriot furiously. “Let go my arm, please!” To his anger, she was strong as he.

“Not without a revolver,” she said imperiously. “Have you no sense? You can’t do anything but get killed—and then I’m gone, too. Come!”

Even in his rage Heriot saw she was right. He was in no trim to fight a madman, with no weapon but his hands.

In utter silence he ran with her up the lighted stairs and into the first room they came to. There was a lamp burning, for it was Egerton’s sitting-room, and by his orders never dark, even in his absence. But as they entered it they heard pattering footsteps on their trail.

“Stop!” Andria caught Heriot as he would have shut the door. “We daren’t. He might get in at Beryl.”

She seized a hard-stuffed bolster from a corner, and, before he could stop her, had sent it twice through the window, with a crash and fall of splintered glass. There was a veranda outside, but no jalousies; nothing to keep an evil thing imprisoned. With an irresistible force she dragged Heriot behind a table, whose cloth reached the ground, and made him crouch there beside her. His arm felt like iron under her fingers. He was waiting for a fight, and saw nothing in her breaking the window but an attempt to fly that way, quickly abandoned as useless.

The hurrying, relentless steps came in, stopped. Then, with a snarling cry of wordless rage, their strange enemy saw the open window. Like a flash, he bounded to it, through it; and Heriot, quicker than he had ever moved in his life, leaped after him. Andria pointed to a heavy chest of drawers.

“That!” she cried. “Keep him out!” and, somehow, the two moved the heavy thing across the window. From outside, without a purchase, it would have taken a Sandow to move it; but the two, with one consent, moved quickly from the room. Heriot shut and locked the heavy door behind them, rejoicing in the iron clamps on the solid wood, but marveling no longer.

“How did he get in?” cried Andria; she leaned against the wall, pale and trembling.

“Come back to Beryl. It’s all right now.”

“Yes,” but he did not move. “Turn round,” he said authoritatively; “let me see your neck! Do you know that brute bit you?”

His whole manner utterly changed, and he laid a hand on her shoulder, where her white dressing-gown was torn to ribbons. He felt a shudder run through her.

“I didn’t—feel it!” she said jerkily. “I was so frightened for Beryl.”

Heriot’s face was dark with shame.

“My God!” he muttered as he saw the deep marks of teeth in the nape of her neck. “I ought to be kicked. Mrs. Erle, I have to beg your pardon a thousand times. I’ve behaved like a beastly cad. I—do you know, it’s all my fault?”

“Is it deep? Will it be poisoned?” She took no heed of his words, and he saw that at last there was terror in her face.

“No!” he lied bravely, sickening at the jagged marks, where the blood oozed. “Come here! Where can I get some water?” but as he spoke his quick eye caught a can standing at the head of the stairs, ready to fill the morning baths.

“Kneel down, and don’t be frightened, please,” he said gently. “If there is any poison I’ll get it out.”

Half-mad with disgust, she did not realize what he meant to do till she felt his lips on her neck. He was sucking the poison from the wound!

At first she nearly flung him from her, and then she buried her face in her hands. There was no one else. Beryl she could not let do it, and Salome was black. But Andria was whiter than marble and cold from head to foot. When the sickening business was done, as she rose from her knees she staggered.

“I ought to thank you,” but she did not look at him. “You——”

“I’m not fit to black your shoes,” he cut her short, with a queer sound in his voice. “For God’s sake, Mrs. Erle, forgive me if you can. I thought you were on Egerton’s side, and in his pay to get rid of the girl. And I’ve just seen you ready to chuck your life away for her.”

“I’m not what you think me. I never was.” She put her hand to her throat and cried out at the pain of the bruised flesh she touched.

“I think you are a good woman,” said Heriot, “and the bravest on God’s earth. I can’t forgive myself. Do you know, it was I let that brute in?”

From very weakness the tears came in her eyes as he told her how; yet spoke up bravely.

“I don’t care. I’m not frightened of the bite if you trust me now. You’ve seen—you must believe me!”

Heriot looked at her, pale and wild in her torn dressing-gown, her beautiful face ghastly. This was the woman he had dared to judge; and she had dared to risk her life for the very girl he had thought she meant to betray. And it was he who had really caused that wound that bled still. He could have gone on his knees in his shame and humiliation.

“Come,” he said quietly, “get the others to let you in, and go to bed.”

“I can’t sleep;” she shook like a leaf, but she followed him.

Salome got the door open in what seemed an endless time, as Andria stood outside with chattering teeth.

“Miss Holbeach!” the woman cried wildly, “it’s daylight! An’ I heard de engines in de bay. De ship’s got back!” she ran past Andria to the top of the house.

The world lay quiet in the hour of daybreak, and Egerton’s yacht lay at anchor in the gray wanness of the calm water.

CHAPTER XX.

AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL.

“‘Bone of thy bone,’ said God to Adam.

‘Core of my core,’ say I to thee.”

“You’re sure, Salome?” Andria cried. Too stiff and weary to move, only her eyes looked alive in her pale face.

“It’s de boat, it mayn’t be him. Oh, my land, Miss Holbeach, dey’s blood on you dress! He’ll kill me. Honey, let ole Salome see! Whata done got yer?”

But Heriot saw she knew.

“If it is Egerton,” he observed grimly, “he won’t have everything his own way. He’ll be amenable enough when he finds he hasn’t only women to bully.”

Andria started.

“He mustn’t find you here!” she cried. “Perhaps he has come to take us away. You must go back to the quarters till I find out what he means to do.”

“We can’t go away and leave him here!” said Beryl sharply, pointing to Heriot.

“We won’t. If Egerton means to take us back to England we’ll make him take Mr. Heriot, too. He mayn’t know how dreadful things are here—he may be better than we think.”

“He knows, honey,” said Salome pitifully. “Don’t you put no trust in dat.”

“You must hide, don’t you see it?” Andria repeated. “This is Egerton’s house. If he finds you here he can turn you out. And then what help could you be to us?”

“He’d have his work cut out,” Heriot returned, almost smiling, standing straight and tall among the three women.

“He wouldn’t cut out no more’n he could do,” observed Salome dryly. “Dat crew on board dat yacht is all cutthroat dagos, dey’d do whatever he tell ’em, knife you or drown you. I been six years in dis house, and you mind me—dey ain’t no chance here in a fight for any one but Mr. Egerton heself!”

“If you want to help us,” begged Andria, “go into the quarters and wait. Chloe and Amelia Jane won’t tell, they’re too frightened of him to speak to him if they can help it.” It was the best way. To see a strange man here might turn Egerton’s good intentions into bad ones.

“Oh, I can’t!” said Heriot, with an angry laugh. “I’d rather have things out with the man.”

A slim, cool hand was on his wrist as he spoke.

“Wait and see,” said Beryl. “Please, Mr. Heriot. Then if he means badly to us you’ll be here to help us.”

Voice and touch were exactly like a child’s. Heriot flushed as he met the tawny eyes that were so innocent.

“All right,” he returned reluctantly. “But if there’s going to be any delay about taking you away from this you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

Andria nodded. This girl, fresh from the convent, had bent the man’s will as all her own worldly wisdom could not do. She glanced from one to the other with a pang at her heart. Love was a bitter thing. If it grew up between them how would it end? She bit her lip, remembering her own love’s beginning.

Salome had run out into the veranda. She came back now frowning with excitement.

“It’s him, he’s back! Coming up de path wid two sailors,” she cried. “Whatever’ll we do if he sees Mr. Heriot?”

“He won’t!” said Beryl promptly. “Mr. Heriot’s going into the quarters to wait and see what happens. Chloe and Amelia won’t tell.”

“Ain’t no sense in trusting dem niggers. You stay here, and I’ll tell ’em you’re gone—went last night. Dey won’t tell you’s been here when dey might tell you is here,” she said shrewdly, and she was off and back before it seemed possible.

“Come, down de side stairs,” she whispered. “Chloe and ’Melia’s comin’ up de front ones now to get ready master’s room. Hurry!”

She dragged him off as she spoke, and Beryl turned to Andria.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Look!” said Andria, and bent down.

The girl drew back with a cry.

“You got that, to save me!”

“I got it, anyhow,” grimly. “I’ll show him that and the broken window in his room where the man went out. I dare him to leave us here after that. I wonder what brought him back so soon?”

“He could have been here before. It’s only six days to England. Andria, do you think he’s come to take us away?”

“What else?”

“I don’t know,” said Beryl, very low. “But I think he hates me worse than Mother Felicitas did. Listen; don’t tell him those jaguars are tame—don’t tell him I play with the kittens. Let him think we’re afraid.”

“I am afraid. There’s no thinking about it.”

“Tell him about the crazy man, make more of that, for that’s really the root of all,” Beryl persisted, with more truth than she knew.

“Why don’t you want him to know the beasts aren’t really dangerous?”

“They are,” coolly, “as far as he is concerned. Andria, are you going to meet him like that, all torn and bloody?” looking at the other woman’s flimsy muslin gown, whose real lace was in shreds.

“It won’t hurt him to see it, I had to feel it,” Andria answered dully. “Beryl, did you notice something last night? When that dreadful, wizened creature came jabbering into our room last night, it wasn’t you he sprang at, it was I! If he had made for you I couldn’t have done anything.”

“I saw,” but to Andria’s surprise she broke into a passion of tears. “Oh, Andria,” she sobbed, “what’s wrong with me that all strange things fear me? Am I half a beast, or crazy, like that dumb, jabbering man?”

But Andria never answered. For once she let the girl she loved cry to her in vain. She was on her feet, breathless, listening with every nerve.

Did every one who came to this dreadful house lose their senses? or did she in very truth hear a voice she had never thought to hear this side of the grave?

Frantic, she hushed the girl who sobbed beside her.

“Be quiet, listen!” her hand like a vise on Beryl’s shoulder. “There’s some one else there with Mr. Egerton.”

A man’s voice, sweet and drawling, came up the stairs from the entrance-hall.

“By George! You do yourself well in your country retreat. The man must have been crazy to sell it to you for such a song!”

“Perhaps he was,” the answer was dry and significant. “My dear boy,” Egerton said in his ordinary tone, “did you expect me to keep my ward in a tent?”

Andria staggered back against Beryl, whose tears had dried on her cheeks.

“I’m faint,” she muttered, “ill. Tell them they can’t see me. I’m going to bed.”

The strength gone from her muscles, her feet barely carrying her, she wrenched herself from Beryl’s hold and crept, more than walked, to her room. That was Egerton down-stairs, and with him was—Raimond Erle!

Why was he here? What had brought him?

She flung herself down on her bed, laughing and crying with incredulous joy. There could be but one reason, he must have found out from Egerton that she was here; must have wearied for her as she had for him, and come himself to tell her that that letter was all a lie; that she was still his wife, always had been and always would be, world without end.

“Thank God! Oh, thank God!” gasped Andria Erle, face down on her bed. She knew now that she could never forget the man who had been all hers, never look on any other but with indifferent eyes. She could forgive Egerton for all the mystery that was round her, could thank him even with that smarting wound at the back of her neck that had brought her here. She had been but half-alive all these weeks, a ghost of herself. Now she could rise again as from her grave, and dress herself to go down fresh and fair when Raimond sent for her. For the first time she was glad the French maid had disobeyed her and packed the gowns she had never meant to wear again.

Not even a thought of all she had to forgive crossed her mind. He was here, he had come for her; that was all.

She rose with feverish haste. There was a pale lilac gown he had liked—“he said I looked like spring in it,” she thought, hunting in her boxes till she found it.

She looked like spring indeed when she had it on and remembered the day he had bought it for her. It deepened her blue-gray eyes into violet, set off her cream-white skin and ruddy hair. Heriot, the past night, forgotten as if they had never been, she stared at herself.

“I’m handsomer than I was,” she thought, with a leaping heart, “fairer, softer! He will be glad, glad when he sees me. But I won’t go down till he sends.”

The soft lilac stuff fell in lovely folds round her as she turned at a knock at the door.

“Come in!” she cried; she could not make her voice quiet. “Come in.”

It was Amelia Jane, carrying her breakfast.

“I thought you was sick!” she cried. “My soul, I dunno when I see you look so well.”

“I’m better—well! Tell me”—the question came beyond her will—“did—did Mr. Egerton send me any message? Is Miss Beryl at breakfast?”

“Yes’m. She an’ Mr. Egerton an’ another gentleman. No, he didn’t send no message.”

“Very well,” she said, her voice oddly flat and unmusical.

“Put the breakfast down, please, Amelia.”

But when the woman was gone she made no attempt to eat; only sank into a chair as if her new-found strength had somehow failed her. If she had been in Raimond Erle’s place, could she have waited all this time?

“Not one minute of it,” said her starving heart. “Not one minute!”

The color faded from her face as she sat and watched the clock. Ten minutes, twenty, three-quarters of an hour—and he had not come, though breakfast must long have been over. She could not sit still and wait like this, dared not go down and meet him before the others.

“I’ll get up and walk up and down. Perhaps by the time I count a thousand steps he’ll be here! Only a thousand little steps, dear saints, and I’ll see him, kiss him, be in his arms.”

She had barely counted a hundred in her wild walk when a man’s step sounded in the hall, a man’s knock on her door.

Radiant, triumphant, incredulous of her own joy, she sprang to the door and flung it wide.

Every drop of blood in her body seemed to surge back to her heart. Egerton, tall, suave, middle-aged, stood on her threshold.

CHAPTER XXI.

STRANGERS.

“Thou shalt meet him, but wilt thou greet him?”

“Ah, no.”

“My dear Miss Holbeach,” he said, “good morning. I am sorry to find you not well. I hope my unexpected arrival did not startle you.”

And indeed she looked ill enough, and startled enough for anything, as she leaned hard on the door-handle that she might not fall. Every vestige of color had gone from her face, even her lips were ashy.

“I’m only faint—I had a fright,” she could only mutter incoherently, as she tried for the breath that came so hardly, “a fright—last night.”

“My poor lady,” he said quite kindly. “I see you are altogether unstrung. I came to ask you to come to my room. I wish to tell you——”

“Oh! not there,” she cried, with an uncontrollable shudder. “Not there!”

“May I come in here, then?” he asked courteously. “This is your sitting-room, I imagine.”

Andria glanced backward at the door she had so carefully closed that Raimond Erle might not see her disordered bedroom, where she had thrown down gown after gown in the search for this one that should please him.

“Come in,” she said, with white lips, anxious only to get the door into the passage shut lest Raimond might pass by, and Egerton looked at her covertly as she sank into a chair, too nerveless to stand. There must have been wild work here to make this woman look as she did. He had heard nothing from either Beryl or Salome, who had both been silent and sullen; but he knew from Andria’s face that she had seen what perhaps he had meant her to see when he brought her here, but what now—since his purpose had changed—he had nearly burst the boilers of his yacht in trying to get here in time to prevent.

For Andria was right, he had never meant to return, his warnings to her and Salome had all been a blind; Beryl Corselas, when first he found her, had been a burden to get rid of, he had not dared to let her stay in England or let his name be heard in connection with her. Here in this island he had meant her to disappear for good and all—but, of course, to his deep sorrow and surprise! He was so careful a scoundrel that he had acted a part even before the servant who was his miserable slave and the woman he had engaged because of her probable unscrupulousness. That he had warned them had been all that kept Egerton from cursing himself for a fool all the way from England. One paragraph in a paper had made those sham warnings real. Lord Erceldonne had sent for his son, and two days after set out in hot haste for his secret retreat, terrified that his plans might have flourished so well as to ruin him.

In the long pause Andria’s slow pulses were loud in her ears; but she had pulled herself together. After all, it was natural that Egerton should come first, natural that he should be puzzled how to open a difficult subject; and of course he must be in Raimond’s confidence. But when he did speak it was not about the man he had brought with him.

“Miss Holbeach,” he said slowly, “you said you had been frightened. Do you mean in this house? Or out of doors? I warned you, you remember!”

“You warned me, and yet you left me here with a defenseless girl,” she said almost inaudibly. She cared little now for the horrors she had suffered; he had come to take them away. Raimond was here; it was all past and gone.

“There was no reason not to leave you here,” he lied calmly. “I will be quite frank with you, there had been a reason; but I learned from Salome that it had quite disappeared.”

There was a sort of lethargy in Andria’s soul; nothing mattered now but Raimond. Yet at the plausible untruth she shook it off.

“It appeared again the very night you left here!” she cried. “A man came, a little, wizened man, like an ape, that hurried around the house and climbed up the jalousies like a monkey. And the next day I saw his face over my shoulder in the pond, a leering thing that mouthed at me——”

“The pond! I told you to keep away from that path,” the anger that was sincere at last steadied her nerves.

“I went to get Beryl. She had strayed there.” The governess looked him in the face with eyes that were magnificent. “I took care that she never went again. But that’s not all. There are beasts here, dreadful jaguars. All night long they hunt and sniff about the house, they climb the jalousies and—I’ve seen their eyes!” with a shudder. “Oh, Mr. Egerton, take us away!”

The man had started to his feet.

“It is what I came to do,” he answered hurriedly. “Believe me, I had no idea of this. I thought the place was safe—Salome said so.”

“Safe for white women!” She rose, too, as the scornful cry broke from her. “I will show you how safe it is. Look here!” She pulled down the lace and ribbon at the back of her collar. “Look at that. Do you know there was nearly murder done here last night. I don’t know why there wasn’t.”

She bent her head, and at sight of the double rows of deep-crimson punctures where the piece had been all but bitten out, the man who had brought her to this evil place was dumb, though a month ago it might have suited him well enough. She straightened her collar again with trembling fingers.

“What did that?” Egerton moistened his lips. “Not a beast? You—you never could have got away!”

“A man,” she said quietly, “a man, dumb, and crazy, and strong, so strong that only God saved me from him. We were standing in Beryl’s room when he came in on us, running, stooping so low that he seemed to be on all fours. I ran between him and Beryl and he jumped on my back. I felt his teeth through my flesh. I ran out into the hall with his fingers round my throat and shut the door on the girl. Then”—her hesitation was so momentary that he did not see it—“something frightened the thing. It let me go and I ran. Did you see there was a chest of drawers against your sitting-room window? It was I put it there. I broke the window when I ran in there, and the man thought I had gone out through the broken pane and followed me. I moved the chest—locked the door”—her chest heaved at the memory; tears born of that suspense that was eating at her heart blinded her. “Oh, surely you didn’t know what you were leaving us to!” she cried.

“Where was Salome?” He was not given to swearing, but he barely kept in a furious oath.

“In Beryl’s bedroom. She saw nothing, knew nothing till I and—that thing—were out in the hall. She has done everything to keep us safe.”

“Whereas you evidently think I brought you here to be murdered!” he returned, a queer look in his black eyes that seemed blacker than ever. “Well, I can’t wonder if you do! Sit down, please, and rest. I owe you a very deep gratitude.”

He bent his head to hide his face, which was not grateful. In his inmost soul he would have been glad if this foolhardy woman had behaved like a good, sensible coward. It would have cut the knot that galled him night and day, though it would have cost him a fortune. Perhaps not that, he would have been in a position to seek other girls with money.

“It’s a long story,” he cut off his thoughts hastily, since what was done was done, “but I must tell it to you to explain. Might I smoke? You don’t mind? Perhaps you will have a cigarette yourself?”

“I? No, I never smoke,” she said, with annoyed surprise.

Mr. Egerton broke out into that hoarse cackle of a laugh that always jarred on Andria’s nerves. He had noticed cigar smoke heavy in the shut-up drawing-room the very instant he had entered the house at dawn; had seen the butt of one of his own cigars reposing in a flower-pot. And now the governess’ hasty lie amused him even in his annoyance. A cigar, too, of all things!

“Many women do smoke, even cigars,” he said urbanely. “I beg your pardon if I thought you had the habit. It seemed quite possible.”

Then he did know about her past when the few women she had known smoked like chimneys! She never remembered having told Salome that Heriot must have cigars; she only wished Egerton would go on. Would he never get to Raimond Erle? She looked at his face and imagined it pleased him to tantalize her.

“What does it all mean?” she asked. “Though I suppose it doesn’t matter if we are going away.”

“It does matter. I don’t want you to think me a murderer,” he said, so gently that it brought back to her another voice which each minute seemed an hour till she heard. “But I must go back a long way to make you understand. Twenty years ago I saw this place first. I was yachting and found it by chance. The house stood exactly as it does now, but it was surrounded by magnificent gardens, was full of servants and luxury. There were only two people in it, a retired planter of forty, and his daughter. She was the most beautiful person I have ever seen, but that,” hastily, “was not my affair, nor, if her father could help it, any one else’s. I saw then the man was mad. He told me he would shoot the first man who wished to marry his daughter, had brought her here out of the world that she might live and die unmarried; a girl who was more beautiful than any woman alive!

“‘He would not have her suffer as women suffered,’ he said. ‘All men were cruel, she should not be at the mercy of any.’ She was his idol. His only other interest was wild animals. He had a regular menagerie—lions, a tiger, jaguars—and he and that girl would play with them as if they were lambs. It used to make my blood run cold to see them. She would sit among the jaguars crooning a queer song”—Andria’s hands that lay on her knees clenched with the effort not to cry out; did he know how dreadful a thing he was telling her? did he mean the madman’s daughter was Beryl’s mother?—“till the beasts came fawning round her like a kitten. Oh, I know it sounds like a fairy-tale! But I saw it.”

Only her innate caution, her habit of distrust, kept her from a quick disclosure. Long afterward she knew she had saved her life by holding her peace.

“Well, I went away! The girl was nothing to me,” he continued, looking not at Andria, but his half-smoked cigarette, so that, being a woman, she knew the girl had been everything to him and he nothing at all to her. “I came back again two years afterward—and I would not have known the place. The beautiful gardens were a tangle of creepers and weeds, the servants were all gone; the animals dead from starvation in their enclosures, all but the jaguars, that had broken loose and foraged for themselves. The man I found at last, ragged, thin, half-naked, and at first he would not speak to me; would only jabber at me without words.”

“Then it was he!” she gasped.

“Wait,” he nodded. “He was dumb, mad, but by and by his madness cleared a little and he told me what had happened. A stranger had come to the island; it was the old story that I need not dwell on”—reflecting hastily that it was one this woman probably knew from cover to cover. “She defied her father and ran away with him in a native boat. The man dismissed his servants and sat alone in his misery, and then heard that all his money, which had been in Brazilian bonds, was lost. He had not a penny to go and seek her through the world. He forgot, as I said, even his animals; almost forgot the use of his tongue, for only at intervals could I make him talk. Well, I was sorry for him!” What vindictive light lit his eyes to her sharp vision! “I liked the place and bought it for a toy, merely that the old man,” he continued slowly, “might be free to go and find his daughter who had deserted him.”

The words were so gently spoken that it took all her cleverness to grasp their meaning. He had tried to set a madman on the track of the woman who had refused him and the man she had loved. Her eyes dilated with abhorrence, and yet his next words came so smoothly that she did not know what to think, and there was no one to tell her how cunningly he was mingling the truth with lies.

“You would have pitied him, too; he had aged twenty years in the two that had passed. All he wanted was to find his daughter, yet when I gave him money he was too crazy to go. He threw it before my eyes into that pond you spoke of and went off to some lair in the woods with his jaguars.” He did not say how pitifully inadequate had been the purchase-money, nor that the lawful owner had been hunted away by men with guns. “In all the years I have been coming here I have only once had any evidence that he was alive”—that once would have made any other man long for the grave that he might hide his shame there!—“and Salome, who has been in charge here for six years, swore to me when I brought you that the place was safe. I am more shocked and horrified than I can say that you should have been in such danger from that lunatic and his animals. To-morrow, if you like, I will have my yacht’s crew scour the country till we find him.”

“Let him be,” said Andria pitifully. “Besides, if we are going away! And we shall be quite safe with you in the house”—“and Raimond!” she added in her mind, the thought of him bringing light to her eyes, color to her lips.

“Yes, exactly,” he agreed quickly, though he had no idea of sleeping in the house or letting the man he had brought with him sleep there either. That madman would tear him limb from limb if he could; Mr. Egerton knew only too well that the very sight of him would rouse boundless fury in the dumb thing that ran up and down the deserted gardens whence his delight had fled. He would never dare to stay in the house knowing that his crazy enemy had ever been able to enter it.

“How did he get in?” he asked.

“I don’t quite know,” she stammered. “I was up-stairs.”

She had forgotten all about Heriot stuffed away in the servants’ quarters till now. She had it on the tip of her tongue to avow everything, but something furtive, dishonest, in Egerton’s face stopped her.

“Better wait,” she thought. “I can tell Raimond first. He will know what to do.”

And though Egerton had explained far more than he had imagined to her all was not clear yet. As he rose to go she rose, too, and looked at him.

“Why did you tell me this was Bermuda?” she asked suddenly.

“From inadvertency, at first—the house is called Bermuda. Then because I feared you would rebel against being banished to an uninhabited part of the Azores. I fancied you had not been accustomed to—dulness!” and at the covert meaning of the words and the lie that began them, she caught her breath. There had been no inadvertence in his mention of Bermuda, first or last.

“I wanted Beryl out of England, you’re right!” he added, as if he knew what was in her mind. “I pitied her. I had no wish to see a long arm stretched out from the convent to claim her, for of course she has told you her story. I hope to see her happily married, not dragging out existence in prison, all but the name. And I knew no other place to put her. But that,” with his queer laugh, “will be remedied now.”

Something in the assured expectancy of his voice woke a dreadful thought in Andria Erle. Like a flash the glamour fell from her eyes, she put two and two together. He meant to see Beryl safely married; he had brought Raimond Erle to this place; the things dovetailed with horrible accuracy, though she could not see what Raimond had to do with Egerton.

“You mean——” she said; she could hardly speak.

“I mean one never knows what the day may bring forth,” he answered lightly. “If you look from your window you may understand.”

She had no need to. Their voices, Beryl’s and Raimond’s, came up to her gaily where she stood. Had she been deaf not to have heard them before?

It was as if a gulf of darkness had opened under her feet, yet she would not flinch if pride could keep her steady. Raimond—did Egerton mean it was for her sake he had come?

Egerton, watching the hot color come and go in the governess’ face, wondered he had never seen how beautiful she was. She would be a dangerous rival for that half-fledged girl down-stairs. He hoped there were not going to be any troublesome complications.

“You are not coming down to-day, you said!” he suggested. “Perhaps you are right, and it would be well to rest.”

She was ready to say she would go down now, this instant, when she remembered he was her master; that governesses did not always come to the table with guests.

“Perhaps it would,” she answered, and the coldness of her voice pleased him.

“I have not mentioned you, at least your name,” he had the grace not to look at her, even though he had no idea she and Erle had ever met; “I thought, perhaps, you would prefer not to meet strangers.”

“No,” and by good luck he did not see her face, “not strangers, though there is no earthly reason you should not mention my name,” for Holbeach would mean nothing to Raimond. “I will go down when you send for me.”

As the door closed behind him she caught at the table to hold herself up. Her eyes were narrowed to slits, and her nostrils pinched as she breathed. From the scented shade of the oleanders below her there floated up a man’s laugh, low and sweet. Agony racked her as even she had not known it could without killing her.

“Strangers,” she said in a dreadful whisper, “he and I!”

Her face convulsed out of all beauty, she ran to the window and looked out behind the jalousy. In the garden, tall, handsome in a haggard, hard-bitten way—and oh, God, beloved!—lounged the man who had been her husband for five years. It took all her will to crush back the cry on her lips. She knew from his face it was not for her he had come back. He had forgotten.

“Then why is he here?” she asked herself. But she dared not answer her own soul.

CHAPTER XXII.

BEHIND THE CYPRESS BOUGHS.

“Andria!” a soft tap came at her locked door. “Let me in. Why haven’t you been down all day?”

“I was busy,” Andria answered, shutting the door behind Beryl. She had been busy, indeed, and if Egerton had seen her now he would have had no fears that her beauty might be a snare to any man’s feet. The pale mauve gown had vanished with all the others that littered her bedroom; in the plainest black gown she owned, Andria stood, tall and pale, her eyes sunken, her mouth drawn; it was as if she had aged ten years.

Beryl sat down on the table, a bright rose spot burning in each cheek.

“I wish you’d come down. I don’t like it without you,” she said restlessly. “Isn’t your throat well enough?”

“I don’t know. I’d forgotten it. Why do you want me? Don’t you like—him?” for her life she could not say the name.

“Who? Mr. Egerton. I’ve always loathed him,” Beryl said angrily, “and I always shall. If it were not for being with you, I’d rather he’d left me in the workhouse!”

“No”—hesitating—“the other?”

“I don’t know. No, I don’t think I do! I liked him when I was with him, but I hate him when I remember his eyes. He looked at me as if I were something to eat,” she said pettishly. “No, I don’t like him. He frightens me.”

“How?” incredulously. Any other than Beryl she would have turned from contemptuously if they had dared to criticize Raimond Erle. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know exactly. But he wanted me to go out in the yacht with him this afternoon, and I said I wouldn’t without you. I wouldn’t go anywhere alone with him.”

“Without me! You said—Beryl, quick, what did you call me? Not Andria?” white as death she stood over the girl.

“No. I did slip and say Miss Heathcote, but I corrected myself and said Miss Holbeach. Why do you look like that? He didn’t notice. You don’t mean he knows you?”

“Not now,” said Andria, holding herself hard. “He did, once. What did he say when you slipped on my name?”

“Nothing. Half-shut his eyes like some people do when they smell a nasty smell.”

“You’re more truthful than polite.”

“Well, you asked me, and that was exactly how he did look. Mr. Egerton swam into the conversation with something about ‘Miss Holbeach being my governess and an excellent woman,’ and Mr. Erle looked comfortable again.”

Andria did not wonder. “An excellent woman!” No words could have been found that would have better set Raimond at rest.

“Did he say any more?” she asked wretchedly.

Beryl turned crimson.

“No, he—he’s a beast, and I hate him!” she said passionately. “He said he was glad I did not produce you at meals; learned ladies took away his appetite.”

“I won’t interfere with it; he needn’t agitate himself! Beryl, dear, don’t speak of me to him; don’t tell him my Christian name, and don’t let Heathcote slip again. I knew him once. I don’t want him to know I’m here. At least,” hastily, “not now.”

Every pulse of her longed to meet him, but not before Egerton and Beryl. If she was to go to England in the same ship she must see him first, but it should be no chance meeting before strangers.

“I won’t say a word about you,” and, with a rare caress, she flung her arms round Andria’s neck—“if you say not. Are you afraid of him, too?”

“No!” said Andria sharply. “I can’t meet any one I ever knew till I’m better—that’s all. See how ugly and swollen my throat is.”

“I hate you being hurt for me. I wish it had been me that was bitten!” Beryl said, with more force than grammar.

“Did you tell him about that?”

“No, I didn’t! I don’t believe he would have listened if I had. He only talked nonsense.”

“Do you mean he made love to you? Bah! Don’t answer me,” she cried, “I was a fool to ask. He would make love to a girl who kept pigs, if she were pretty.”

“I don’t want him to think I’m pretty!” said Beryl, ruffled as a cat stroked the wrong way, utterly ignorant of the way she was betraying her own thoughts. “What have you done about Mr. Heriot? Have you told?”

“No; I—waited!” answered Andria, with a ghastly smile, knowing she had waited for what would never be. “Beryl, come here, look! There go Mr. Egerton and—his friend—down to the shore. What for, do you suppose?”

“Didn’t you know? They’re not going to stay here. They’re going to dine and sleep on board the yacht and come back in the morning. And Mr. Erle isn’t his friend—he’s his nephew. That’s why I came; I thought we might go”—flushing—“and speak to Mr. Heriot. Didn’t you get anything out of Mr. Egerton about our going away? And did he say anything about that dreadful man, and the jaguars?”

“Yes,” said Andria, as if she talked in her sleep. “I’ll tell you by and by.” She leaned from the window looking after the man whose shoulders and walk she would know among a thousand. He knew nothing of her being here. Beryl’s slip of “Heathcote” had been to him only a disagreeable coincidence, reminding him of things he wished to forget. Then, what had brought him?

“Beryl!” It was as if another person had spoken aloud in her ear. “Egerton means to marry him to Beryl!”

She could think of no reason why, and yet she was sure. And why not? For all she knew, Beryl Corselas might be any one’s daughter, and whatever her secret history was, Egerton must know it.

“He’ll never do it, never! Whether I’m Raimond’s wife or not, I’ll stop it,” she thought, wild passion at her heart. “I’ll tell anything, everything. Mr. Heriot will back me up——”

Beryl pinched her.

“What are you dreaming about, with your face all screwed up?” she said. “Let’s go and see Mr. Heriot. How those two men do loiter! If they’re going, why don’t they go?”

Andria stared at her. Beryl—Raimond—Heriot—what a tangle it was! And would Heriot back her up? He knew nothing of her but that she had been called “the Lovely Andria,” and had been thought to have fastened like a leech on Raimond Erle, dragging him to that financial ruin which had certainly overtaken him—though not through her, Heaven knew! And when Heriot saw Raimond here, he would never believe Andria was not in the whole scheme, let it be what it might.

“I don’t care what he thinks!” she reflected swiftly. “Nothing matters to me but Raimond. And I may be wronging him. Egerton may be trying to keep me out of his way.”

She turned impulsively to Beryl.

“Stay here,” she said impetuously, “wait for me. I don’t know what to do. I must go and think.”

But it was not to think that she ran out into the gardens, brushing by Salome, who tried to stop her in the hall to say something—what, Andria neither knew nor cared. Only one thing was in her mind—to find out why Raimond Erle was here, if not for her. Why should she believe Egerton; who had lied to her before?

The front door was in full view of the two men, who stood talking still just where she had first seen them. Andria ran to a disused side veranda and dropped down on a flower-bed. She wanted no one to see her, least of all Beryl from her window. She vanished into a tangle of overgrown bushes that Beryl called “the cat’s walk.” It cut the long road to the shore—that instinct told her the two men would take—at a right angle, and then ran parallel with it almost to the bay. There would be only a yard of impervious thicket between her and Raimond, if she got there in time to keep pace with him as he walked down the wide road.

She did not care as she ran that it was nearly sunset, and that those teeth that had marked her neck might not be shaken off twice; she was not even breathless with her breakneck pace as she reached the angle of the path. She need only reach it, and whatever Raimond spoke of she would hear.

“It’s low—contemptible!” she thought grimly, “but I don’t care. I must find out what I can, and——” the thought broke off unfinished. They were coming!

White-faced over her black dress, the governess, “that excellent woman,” crouched behind the thicket of black cypress that was all that stood between her and the man who had been her husband.

And, sharpened as her senses were, she never dreamed that two yards in front of her stood some one else, equally quiet, but from widely different motives.

Raimond’s voice—how the woman’s heart burned in her at the rich note of it!—came on her ears.

“You do hurry so unmercifully,” he was saying, “even down to that confounded ship of yours. Why wouldn’t you stay up there and sleep in a decent bed? Would you mind waiting one instant? My cigar’s gone out.”

“Light it and be good enough to come on!” returned Egerton sharply. “It’s nearly sunset, and I have no desire to get fever. You can talk on the yacht.”

“Oh, damn the yacht! That cook has the same menu every night. I wanted to see what your niggers would give us for dinner.”

Andria heard a match struck, then another.

“Take my box,” said Egerton irritably, “and if you must dawdle here, tell me what you mean to do. Isn’t the girl handsome enough for you, or—you’re not still thinking of that wretched woman in London!” said Egerton suspiciously.

“Her? Oh, Lord, no! To be candid with you, I’d had enough of that; I wasn’t sorry to be well out of it. She was a good-looking woman, though! But I was tired of that house in Pont Street.”

“You told me the truth when you said you weren’t fool enough to marry her?”

In the dead silence the woman they spoke of heard the man she loved puffing at a cigar that would not draw; more interested in that than in the question on which her life seemed to hang. The screen of trees was thick, but if either man had seen the face behind it he would not have known the white mask of agony. Would Raimond never answer? When he did, it was with a laugh, and the governess, poor fool! winced.

“I was mad enough for anything—at first! When I took her away from Lady Parr’s,” he said coolly. “But I drew the line at that, more by good luck than good management. At first I thought the marriage legal enough, but then I found the man who did it was only a student—no more ordained than you or I, though he’s since become a priest. Oh, I’m perfectly eligible, my dear sir,” with another slight laugh. “But though I see excellent reasons for my marrying this particular girl, I’m not in much haste. She looks too much of a tiger-cat, for one thing! Now, the late Mrs. Erle had faults, but she was never more gentle than when she was in a furious rage.”

“What became of her?” asked Egerton shortly.

“Don’t know, and don’t care. I don’t see why you should, either, when you were always at me to get rid of her. But that’s beside the question. What you don’t seem to see is that you can’t hurry this girl. She shies off if I look at her. You’re always too nippy. You shoved her off here to get rid of her, and then tore your hair because you’d done it. Let me remind you, it was I put you on her track in the first place; without me, you’d never have put a finger on her. You chose to treat me as a fool, and sneaked her off here. Then when you see that a certain Spanish grandee is dead and—oh, don’t interrupt me; there is not a soul about—has left all his money to a certain lady or her heirs, and that those heirs are being advertised for, you fall on my neck and beseech me to save your credit and your acres. Well, it suits me well enough! I fancy the girl. But I’m going to do it in my own way. So far, I beg to tell you, you’ve made a mess of it, in yours.”

“Raimond!” the man’s voice was furious. “Don’t play the fool, don’t dare. You don’t know all that hangs on it. It’s not the money only, nor even the succession, it’s——” his voice dropped so low that even Andria, whose very soul was listening, could not hear.

“What!” cried Erle, startled for once. “But she dare not tell, there!”

“No; we’ve got her in our hands in a way—but only in a way. She—Mother Felicitas, they call her now,” with that uncontrollable, jarring laugh of his, “has long claws! She will want the money, too, to go to the convent—and the Lord knows she’ll have to pay well for her seat in heaven!”

“But why,” said Raimond, stupefied, “if you knew about her all along, didn’t you have her out of the convent long ago?”

“With publicity—back debts to pay up—to take you or leave you as seemed good to the half-fledged brat! No! And I couldn’t have got her. If you will have it, I’d been taken in. That woman held her over my head till I found her—and I didn’t know about the money till I got back from here. Before that, if I’d claimed her, I’d have brought out old stories, ruined myself, ousted you or saddled you with a penniless wife.”

“Whereas, now, I’m made or marred by what a pale little devil with cat’s eyes chooses to answer me,” replied Raimond coarsely. “Well, there’s no choice! I’ll marry her if she says yes to my somewhat mature charms. If she says no, I fail to see what’s to be done next!”

“Then,” said Egerton angrily, “you’ve less sense than I imagined. Why do you suppose I hired a yacht with money I haven’t got, and brought her and you to this God-forsaken hole? If she says no, she can live and die here. She’ll never get back to England, and she doesn’t know who she is in any case. I should fancy it was simple as A B C. We’ll lose the money, but we’ll save the rest.”

Raimond Erle for a long minute said nothing. The wretched listener who shrank appalled behind the screen of cypress could not see that he was looking the other man up and down.

“Well,” he remarked at last, “you must have been a daredevil when you were young! But I quite agree with you. There’s only one character in which your protégée can be taken to England, but you must give me a little time to play the game. Come on out of this,” with sudden distaste. “I don’t know why, but I feel as if there were devils behind every bush in your secluded retreat.”

“There’s one; oh, there’s one!” said Andria Heathcote, who knew now that she had never been Andria Erle, though she had hoped against hope even when she was turned out on the world with ten pounds. “I’ll ruin you—ruin you! If there’s a God in heaven, you shall never have Beryl to torture as you tortured me!”

A thousand slights, a thousand dreadful positions he had put her in where she must hold up her head till women called her brazen—aye, and men, too!—came back to her. One kindly word, one pitying regret for the woman he had once been mad for, and she might have played into his hands for no other reason than that he had spoken of her softly for old sake’s sake. But now—she could hate him now!

Blindly, not seeing or caring where she was going, she stumbled forward on the rough path, and round the very next bush nearly fell against—Heriot!

Pale, quivering from head to foot, she stood quite still. For a moment she could not speak for the ungovernable fury of rage in her that he should have heard her shamed.

“You listened!” she cried at last. “You heard.” In the last low rays of the sinking sun he stood before her bareheaded.

“I slipped out for some air,” he said, very low. “I stood here because I did not want them to see me till I knew what you had done. Yes, I heard.”

If he had dared to pity her she would have stood like a stone, but now something in his voice reached the heart that felt frozen in her breast. She broke into such a dreadful sobbing as he had never heard.

“I knew it before,” she cried; “though I wouldn’t believe it. Even when he turned me away, I wouldn’t believe it. I thought I was his wife. He shall never have Beryl—never, unless he kills me to get her!”

“Come back to the house. It is too late to be out,” was all Heriot could find to say. He turned away that he might not see the shame and agony in her distorted face.

“He whispered,” she cried, distracted. “I couldn’t hear. Why, besides the money, does his uncle want him to marry her?”

“His uncle!” Heriot exclaimed. He was glad as he had not often been that he had heard all that had been said, or not for a hundred oaths from her would he have believed this woman knew nothing of the dirty work Erle had on hand. And he had wronged her enough by judging her. If it had not been for his self-righteousness she would have told him everything long ago. “That wasn’t his uncle. That was his father, Lord Erceldonne! He is not Egerton at all.”

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CRY IN THE STARLIGHT.

“Erceldonne!” the world swam with her.

For how many years had that name been her terror, its owner her evil genius. Sometimes it had been clear even to her blinded eyes that his anger was used as a pretext for not acknowledging her, and again she had known when he had really put pressure on his son, and nothing but a dogged, cross-grained temper had kept Raimond from giving her up. And here she was taking his money, the paid servant of the man who had ruined her life; for if it had not been for the fear of disinheritance, Raimond would have married her openly in the days when love was young. And Erceldonne——

To Heriot’s horror, she broke out into a harsh scream of laughter. What would Erceldonne say if he knew the very woman he had been at his wit’s end to get rid of had been brought by his own accord under his very roof? She turned to Heriot, wiping away the tears born of that horrible, mirthless laughter.

“What a merry-andrew patchwork it is!” she cried. “‘Three blind mice, see how they run’—now you come in, and then Raimond and the others; we’re all in the dreadful round. And by and by the farmer’s wife will come and cut all our tails off! Why don’t you laugh?” she cried wildly.

He might have answered with perfect truth, because there was nothing further from his mind than laughter. Here in the fast-growing gloom of the cypress thicket, where Andria’s face was already but a patch of white against the dark foliage, they were half a mile from the house; and he knew now what the dangers were in this place after nightfall. The very man who had brought two women here had not cared to stay and face them.

“What a fool I was to lie low!” he thought angrily. “If I had appeared at first everything would have had to be open and aboveboard. Now, I can’t come out after slinking away as I did. I wonder why I listened to that child?”

But he knew quite well why he had listened. From the very first day her slow, soft voice, her strange eyes, had bewitched him. It was for more than Andria’s sake that he was aghast at the cold wickedness of the man who was pleased to call himself Egerton.

“Come home, come back to the house!” he said sharply. “We’ve only got to-night before us to settle what we must do;” but in his mind there was, of course, only one thing to be done. He must reckon with Erceldonne in the morning.

He dared not even talk as he hurried his companion up the path. His foot was stiff still, though his strength had come back to him; but no man’s strength and his bare hands were going to avail anything against a madman and two jaguars; and the woman at his side would welcome death as a friend.

If he had been alone he would have returned to the house with his hands in his pockets—he could only die once, and life was not so sweet to a broken man that he should worry about it. But with this silent, listless woman on his hands, Heriot’s heart was in his mouth at every strange shadow in the ever-deepening dark. When they were free of the woods he felt easier. The good stars shone down on them as they reached the open garden and drew near the house, and a quick compassion ran through him for Andria Erle, whose only refuge was under the roof of her enemy.

“Look! What’s that?” he said quietly. “Let me go first.”

“There’s no need,” returned Andria lifelessly. “If you mean that black thing in the shadow by the steps, it’s Salome. She’s waiting for me; she saw me go out.”

The woman came to them swiftly, her finger on her lips.

“Don’t speak,” she said softly; “Chloe’s in de dining-room. Oh, my Lawd! I didn’t know where you was both got to.”

“Send her away,” whispered Andria, with sudden passion. “Tell her you’ll wait on me, anything!” She would go mad if she had to sit through dinner alone, if Heriot must hide when there was so little time to make a plan.

“I’ll tell her and ’Melia Jane dey must iron dem two white dresses for Miss Ber’l to-night. Dey won’t be no more’n time, and when dey gits out in de wash-house,” she said shrewdly, “dey’ll be skeered to come in again. Dey’ll sneak up-stairs to deir beds.”

“Anything, only be quick!” Heriot should stay where he was till he heard all she had to say; all the dreadful tale Egerton had let out about Beryl, without knowing that she was putting two and two together. “Lock them out, Salome,” she added feverishly.

“Yes’m! You come into de house, de two of you. Just you sit in de drawing-room an’ don’t speak till I tell you dey’s gone.”

Heriot had almost to push Andria in. It seemed as if she courted death out under the stars.

When he had bolted the heavy door noiselessly, he followed her into the dark drawing-room. What was Salome doing that she was so long? He heard her voice in the back of the house; not raised in authority, but wild with astonishment and fright. Before he could draw breath, the fat black woman had thrown open the dining-room door, her shapeless figure grotesque against the lighted dinner-table as she stared into the gloom where the two sat.

“Oh, missus,” she said, “missus! And dem niggers never told me.”

“Told you what?” cried Andria. Heriot, with that open door in front of him dared not speak.

“Little miss is gone out. Dat man, de tall one, wid de marks o’ de devil’s claws round his eyes, he come back for her. He said you was waiting for her down at de shore, you was both going to dinner on de yacht. An’ she’s went wid him, after last night. Dey’ll be et.”

Heriot let out an astonished oath. If it had not been for that stupid lie about the governess and his private knowledge, it might have seemed natural enough that Beryl should dine on the yacht. But Andria’s wits were quicker, and she knew Raimond Erle.

He had been bored with his father’s society, and must have come straight back by the short cut. The girl was handsome. Even without getting her on board the Flores, a starlight walk with her would pass the time. That lie about the governess had been told when she refused to go with him; it was the first thing he would think of. She knew how obstinate he was about anything he might take in his head. He knew nothing about the dangers of the island; if he did, recklessness and a revolver would make him laugh at them. A beautiful girl, whom he must make love to for reasons he had seen fit to exclaim at; a night warm and silent, heavy with flower scents, the soft stars ablaze in the sky!—his discarded wife clenched her teeth. Not anything on earth would have balked Raimond of his evening walk.

“But I will!” she cried to herself, wild and bitter in her rebellion. “I, that he shamed and turned out,” she fumbled blindly on a table in the dark.

“I must go,” she said, with something cold and dreadful in her voice that Salome took for fear, like her own. “If he said I was at the shore, I’ll be there. There will be time by the short cut.”

“Oh, don’t you do it! You won’t do no good,” cried the black woman. “Mr. Egerton he’ll take care of little miss—if ever she gets to de boat!”

“He’ll take such care of her that she’ll never come back,” Andria muttered.

Yet it was not fear for the girl that was in her heart, but the jealousy that is more cruel than the grave. No one knew as she did what Raimond could be when he chose. She did not believe for one instant that any girl could resist him. She was past Heriot like a flash, regardless of anything but those two walking down to the shore in the scented night, under the gorgeous stars—a man and a maid.

“Hold on!” Heriot was at her side. “Did you think I wasn’t coming? Though I don’t see what good either of us can do if she’s gone on board the yacht. What’s that?”

His hand, swinging against hers as they walked, had touched something cold and sharp. Before she knew what she was doing it was in his grasp, not hers. In the starlight he saw what it was.

“This will do to fight the jaguars with,” he said coolly, pocketing the lean, ugly dagger just as if he had not seen her face in the square patch of light from the dining-room door as she ran past him. “I’ll attend to that, if you’ll catch your charge. Hold on, that’s not the way!”

“It’s the way I’m going,” she replied savagely.

She began to run as once before she had run down that path; every turn of it seemed familiar to her, even in the veiled light. She took no more thought for Heriot than if he had been a dog; he had the dagger; let him take care of himself.

Round the great boulders, through the thickets of flowers, she fled as one possessed; hatred at her heart, jealousy tearing her. Heriot, stumbling over the tough, trailing vines, missing the dim track a hundred times, was soon far behind. The more he hurried, the less he got on. He had taken the dagger from her because he had seen red murder in her eyes, yet now he almost wished she had it. He knew from instinct that there was more abroad in the woods than Raimond Erle and the girl he had decoyed away. Yet not a sound reached him as he doggedly followed the governess. He gave a sudden, contemptuous laugh at himself for being mixed up in such a wild-goose chase—and at Erle, who had had to cajole a girl to go with him by a lie! The next instant he laughed no longer.

He was out of the wooded path on the open shore. Before him was the dark figure of Andria Erle, standing motionless; as he came up to her she pointed dumbly.

The moon had risen, and perfectly distinct on the calm waves of the bay was a boat with a solitary figure in it, a man rowing with a quick, ill-tempered stroke.

“She left him. She hasn’t gone with him!” Heriot exclaimed. “But where is she?”

“I don’t know,” answered Andria, with chattering teeth. What would have seemed nothing in another place was eery here, after the strange story of that other girl who sang to animals. And yet her heart was lighter as she turned away. It was something, at least, that Beryl had not gone to the yacht.

But now that her passion of rage and fear was dead, she dared not go back to the house by that path she had been warned not to use in broad daylight. It was by the long way that she hurried Heriot to the house; yet it was he, not she, who was nervous about the girl who had gone back alone. If Egerton’s tale were true, neither the madman nor his dreadful familiars would hurt Beryl; but still Andria winced when they reached the house and found she had not come in.

“What shall we do?” She sat down on the door-steps sick at heart.

“Go and look for her. At least, I will. You stay here,” but he had not gone twenty yards when he recoiled.

“Did you call?” he cried sharply.

“No one did,” but through her words there came the echo of a faint cry, low and wailing like a lost soul.

Heriot, running as if he had been shot out of a gun, made for the moonlit woods.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE MADMAN.

He might well have run at that cry, for nothing but sheer terror had forced it from Beryl Corselas.

Half from real dislike of the man, half from wanton mischief, she had dexterously slipped away from Erle and vanished like a spirit into an opening in the thick bush. Full of laughter, she had run and doubled like a hare, while he crashed after her through the scrub, till, angry and crestfallen, he had flung himself into his boat and departed.

Breathless, Beryl sat down on a convenient stone and chuckled.

“How cross he was! And that was a horrid lie about Andria expecting me. But he has lovely eyes, and he is—yes, he is amusing! But I don’t think I like him. I don’t like men at all,” she said, with sudden gravity. “I hate Mr. Egerton, for I don’t believe a word he says, and Mr. Heriot treats me like a child. Mr. Erle doesn’t do that.” She got up crossly and began to saunter homeward. She was almost sorry she had not gone with Erle in spite of that lie. It was dull at home, where Heriot seemed only to care to talk to Andria.

“I never would have stirred a foot with Mr. Erle if Andria and Mr. Heriot had not gone off and left me like that,” she thought, with an unreasonable lump in her throat, her short-lived joy at having outwitted Erle all gone.

It was pitch-dark in the woods as she began to walk back to the house. She had run and doubled so that she was not too sure where she was, and an uneasy feeling came over her that she was not on the right path. There was a queer rustling, too, in the bushes, and she listened, her heart going like a frightened bird’s.

“It must be my cats,” she thought determinedly, and with a voice that was not too steady she began her queer calling croon. But not a stealthy footstep sounded anywhere; no yellow-green eyes looked from the bushes; no cubs bounded from the black underbrush. Instead there fell in the wood a sudden, deathlike silence, far more threatening to the girl than the sight of those beasts who were tame for all their fierce looks.

“The man!” Her heart gave a rending bound. “That crazy, jabbering man. And he’s hunting me!”

Wild with terror she looked round her, and had no idea which way to run. She was lost, alone in the trackless scrub; it was so dark she could not even see where she walked. And only one thing could keep the cats away if there were in sound of her call—their master’s voice that was stronger than hers, meaningless jabber though it was.

In desperation she pushed straight before her, tearing through the thick bushes; stumbling, great drops of perspiration on her face from the airless heat. As she crashed forward, making noise enough to wake the dead, her ears caught above all the sounds of crackling branches and tearing vines that slight, slight rustling, as of feet that were keeping pace with her, very close beside her.

She turned sharply and burst through a screen of bushes, to find herself standing by the clear pool she had seen one morning. The moon shone down as bright as day, after the dreadful darkness of the woods the clear sheet of water looked like home; and then she screamed, a long, wailing shriek that had turned Heriot cold.

At her side, almost touching her, was the apelike thing that had bitten Andria to the bone. The next instant its long claws of fingers were on hers. In utter despair she shut her eyes and waited for the horror that was coming. Would the thing tear her limb from limb?

But except for that hand on hers it was not touching her, and as she stood, sick and stony with fear, a hoarse voice spoke to her.

“Dearest of my soul,” it said in Spanish; “dearest of my soul.”

With a cry of astonishment she opened her eyes. The man was not dumb, then, nor utterly dangerous! For he was down on his knees by her, kissing the hem of her garment. The soft language she had learned by stealth in the convent came back to her like a flash.

“Who are you?” she cried. “What do you want? Why do you frighten us so?”

“You have come home; come back to me!” The voice was the voice of an old man, the kneeling figure pitifully thin and ragged. “I am the old man who loves you—don’t you remember me? It was I gave you that ring!” He touched the green beryl on her finger pleadingly.

She stared at him; yet she dared not say she had found the ring.

“You frightened me, you hurt my governess last night,” she cried angrily. “Go away and let me alone!”

“I did not know you liked her. I thought she was his servant,” the old man whimpered. He began to beg her pardon a hundred times.

“I to frighten you, I that love you!” he cried. “I will never touch a hair of any one that belongs to you. I’ll never leave you again.”

“You must go away—and never come back,” cried Beryl, stamping her foot, seeing no meaning in the words Andria would have understood too well.

The thing crouched at her feet.

“Little dearest, I will go,” said the broken old voice, and tears of pity came to Beryl’s eyes. “But if he comes,” it was fierce again, “call me and I will send him away. He shall never steal you again.”

“Beryl! Where are you?” The sudden shout was stern and yet anxious. “Answer me.”

Heriot’s voice. What should she do? She looked at the crazy face beside her, in an instant all the humanity had been wiped off it as the man scrambled to his feet.

“I will call my cats,” he whispered, with the leering grin that had terrified Andria. “They will claw him.”

“No!” she said hastily. She stooped and put her hand on those bent, repulsive shoulders. “No. Listen—this man who’s coming is my friend, look at him well. When I call you, you and your cats can claw—but never him nor my governess. If you hurt them I’ll never let you see me again.”

He winced pitifully.

“My soul is yours,” he said. “I will not come near the house nor let the cats come—till you call us with the song I taught you. I will keep away from the house. But, querida mia, do not go with him again! This time I will be quicker, and save you.”

“Go!” said the girl in a frantic whisper, hearing Heriot breaking through the bushes. “Go, till I do call you.”

Almost as she spoke Heriot sprang out into the open space. Was he dreaming, or did he see beside the girl in her white gown a crouching thing like an ape?

He ran to her, round the pool. There should be an end of this thing that hunted women! Mad or sane, the man deserved no more mercy than a venomous beast. But as he reached the girl he stopped short. She was absolutely alone.

“Run to the house!” he cried. “That brute’s behind you, and I’m going to finish him once for all. Did he hurt you?” he cried savagely.

She lifted her face, and he saw she was crying.

“No, no,” she said as gently as Andria might. “Nothing hurt me. And—there’s no one here!”

“But I saw him,” replied Heriot grimly. “And I heard you scream.”

She laid a quick hand on his arm as he would have passed her.

“There’s no one here; if there was, he’s gone,” she said. “I did not mean to scream. Did I frighten Andria?”

“What was it?” he insisted almost roughly, for he was certain he had seen that crouching, wizened figure at her side, though there was no sign of it now, nor even a leaf stirring in the warm moonlight.

Instead of answering she looked him in the face with the moonlight full on her strange, tawny eyes till they looked like wells of light, deep and golden. Something in them seemed to strike him like a blow. Yesterday they had been a child’s eyes, careless, almost shallow. To-night—Heriot’s heart began to pound. The girl had come into her birthright of womanhood, of a marvelous witchery that would be a snare to the feet of men.

“What made you scream, Beryl?” and this time he did not speak as to a child. “Tell me.”

“I lost myself. It was dark. I meant to call, and I suppose I screamed.” She could not tell the truth, for the old shame that was on her that beasts and strange creatures loved and obeyed her.

“Why did you leave Erle?” though Heaven knew it was no business of his! “You were in his charge. What did he mean by letting you come back by yourself?”

“He couldn’t help it,” she said, with a laugh in her eyes. “I led him a dance, you know. He went away disgusted, for he couldn’t find me.”

“Do you like him?” asked Heriot. There was a curious look in the handsome face that had seldom darkened for any woman’s words.

“I don’t know,” said Beryl, with provocation. “When I find out shall I tell you?”

There was the faintest stir in the thicket, and suddenly Heriot knew that whatever the evening’s adventures had been she did not mean him to know them.

“Oh, I!” he said lightly; “just as you like.” He led the way up the path in silence till they reached the open ground and could see the house.

“I’ll watch you safely in,” and he took off his cap; “you’ll be all right from here. Good night.”

“Aren’t you coming to dinner? They won’t be back.”

“No!” he returned, for to be hidden in Erceldonne’s house and eat his bread any longer was impossible.

“You had better. You won’t see us much longer,” she said coolly. “Do you know Mr. Egerton’s going to take us away?”

“If——” he stopped himself. It was no business of his. If she chose to marry Erle, regardless of his past and Andria’s, that was her affair. Till Andria told her, he had no right to.

“If what?”

“Nothing,” he said awkwardly.

“You are treating me like a child again, just as I had begun to like you!” she cried pettishly, and the very childlike ring of her voice appealed to him. Yet he stood utterly silent.

If he, a broken man, a penniless adventurer, should make love to a girl who eavesdropping had told him was an heiress, the thing would not be called by a pretty name. He did not care two straws for the mystery about her if only she were the waif she seemed.

“Yet after all,” he thought swiftly, “even a broken-down devil like me would make her a better husband than Erle—supposing he’s free, which I don’t believe! Because she may have money and I have none am I going to hand her over to the first roué who wants her? By George! I’m going to do no such thing.” But even he dared not tell her what he knew about Raimond Erle.

In the moonlight she stepped to his side like a lovely ghost, and as she brushed him in passing, a quick rapture ran through him. There was no sense in reasoning, he loved her—for life and death and the world to come. At a word from her he would sweep Erle and his father from her path like straws. He would not tell her the trap she was in, she must choose for herself freely and without bias. But he would not let her go. If she should learn to love Erle—and Heaven knew why, but many women did—what would she feel when Andria made the scene she was sure to do?

“Why don’t you speak?” she broke out petulantly. “I know what you’re thinking—that if Mr. Egerton is going to take us away you’re going to start off through the bush to-night and try for the town there is across the island! You’re going to wash your hands of Andria and me.”

“What else can I do, if you’re going back with him?” and his voice was utterly grim.

“You can go with us.”

“In the first place I wouldn’t go, and in the second they wouldn’t take me. No; if you’re going in the yacht I should be off to-night, if it weren’t for leaving you and Mrs.—Miss Holbeach to that crazy brute I let in last night.”

The girl recoiled as if he had struck her. Heriot cursed himself for having haggled at Andria’s name. But it was not that.

“Oh,” cried Beryl, with a sob of shame, “he won’t come! He’ll never come any more, nor his cats, either. Don’t speak to me, don’t ask me why, Andria knows,” she was crying bitterly, “that all queer animals and things come to me. And I met him to-night, and I did scream, though I told you a lie! He was so old—and so pitiful—I couldn’t let you hurt him. But he was there all the time I said he was gone.”

“Darling!” said Heriot softly. “Little brave darling, don’t cry.” He put his arm round the bowed shoulders as gently as a woman, and with as self-forgetful a tenderness. He knew no other girl would have pitied a man who filled her with terror, who had bitten like a beast before her eyes only last night.

“Don’t cry!” he repeated. “And why do you mind that animals trust you and miserable things come to you? I loved you for it the very first day I saw you.”

“Mother Felicitas said I wasn’t human! I was half a beast,” she sobbed. “And it makes me afraid of—who I am.”

“Beryl, look at me,” said the man softly.

She stopped crying; just in time, if she had known it, to keep her sobs from jealous ears close by.

“Do you know,” Heriot said, “why things like that trust you? Because you love them and have no fear of them. I would give half my life to have dumb animals come to me as they do to you. Don’t you know that no wild thing will come to any one who isn’t so good that they know it?”

“No!” she whispered.

He nodded gravely.

“There is something else just as true,” he said very low. “I love you, too,” he stooped his handsome head and kissed her hands.

At the light touch of his lips she shivered.

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. For his life he could not speak above his breath.

“You can’t!” she cried. “No one does but Andria.”

“Look at me,” he repeated more gently than ever, and as she raised her eyes the sweetness and truth in his overmastered her. “Tell me, can’t you love me—only a little?”

“I don’t know;” but she had loved him madly, jealously, since the very day he came. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do.” He had seen her eyes. “Beryl!”

She clung to him suddenly.

“They would murder you! Salome said so. Oh! take me away from this place—from Mr. Egerton.”

“I’ll try!” said Heriot soberly. And suddenly the task before him flashed out in its true colors. He realized that unless he could be outwitted Erceldonne would kill the girl before he let her get away.

“You can do it if you want to!” Somehow she was disappointed, taken aback. The slow words that were so much better than a rash promise had chilled her almost to distrust. Before he could answer she had broken away from him and was scudding across the grass to the house.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE LAUGH IN THE DARK.

A weakness like the lethargy that comes before death had bound Andria hand and foot. Where she had sunk down on the door-step she stayed, caring nothing for the dark shadows of the garden, or the beasts, and worse, that might be hidden in them.

Raimond had left Beryl and gone to the yacht—that was the only thing really in her thoughts. But he would not be so balked a second time. It would be better if death came and took her where she sat, found Beryl in the lonely woods, for it would cut the coil around them both, the coil the girl understood not at all—the woman too well. She bowed her head on the cold stone door-steps, too hopeless to care how the matter ended.

The moon rose and poured a flood of light on the lovely, desolate figure, almost lying on the steps with hidden face. Her misery, her shame that another had heard, had numbed the woman’s wits. Raimond was done with her, would care no more for her claim on him than for his last year’s neckties. If Beryl fell in love with him she might not care either. Andria could not think past that, except to be sure that she would never leave the island, even if she chose to go in the yacht with Raimond and the girl who was to stand lawfully in her own unlawful shoes.

A sudden touch roused her. Salome, like a black statue, was sitting beside her.

“I been down in de woods,” she whispered. “I seen him kiss her. She’s coming now. Oh, missus, dey’ll be murder!”

“Seen who?” fierce, suddenly alive in every nerve, she sprang up. Had she been mistaken, and it was not Raimond she had seen rowing away! “For God’s sake, Salome, who?”

“Mr. Heriot,” but she sprang up, too, at the dreadful laugh that came from Andria. “Don’t do like dat for de land’s sake!” she exclaimed. “Dey ain’t never no good come from dat kind o’ laughin’. And I tell you he must go out o’ dis to-night. Mr. Egerton he tell me Miss Ber’l gwine to marry dat nephew he brung. What’ll he say when he finds out?—for she’ll never marry him now, dat I tell you!”

“Oh, Salome!” the white woman seized the black one’s hand, more relieved than if she had brought her the riches of the world. “What a fool I’ve been. I never thought of that. Hush! Here’s Miss Beryl now. But—she’s alone!”

Yet as she looked at the girl’s face in the warm moonlight she knew Salome was right. The indifferent child of yesterday was gone. This was a woman, and surely, surely, she would fight as women do, tooth and claw, for the man she loved.

“Where’s Mr. Heriot?” she asked softly.

“Coming.” She hesitated. “Andria——”

“I know,” a wave of pity came over her for the girl whose wooing would be so stormy, and then a cold terror. Salome knew Egerton—she knew Raimond—neither would hesitate in this lonely island at anything that would put out of the way the man and woman who threatened their schemes. She looked up and saw Heriot approaching as carelessly as if the terrors of the place did not exist, and the foolhardy thing they were all doing came over her.

“Come in; it isn’t safe to sit here,” she cried, and as Beryl broke from her at the coming steps she turned to Salome. “Take her in and put her to bed. Make her eat something,” she whispered. “I’ll talk to him.”

Salome nodded.

“Make him go,” she breathed. “Get him out o’ dis. Dey’ll murder him if dey finds out. It ain’t no use his wantin’ to marry her nor trying to fight for her. Dey’ll just walk plunk over him, and all she’ll ever know is dat he ain’t come back some morning.”

She shambled off after the girl, but there was tragedy in her working face.

From old, old times she had known that there was no way but giving in with Egerton. If the girl were meant for his nephew he would have her in spite of ten Heriots and without an open refusal.

“Come in,” repeated Andria, as Heriot stood irresolute in the doorway. “I think we must all be mad to stay out of doors after last night.”

She spoke with an irrepressible shiver; he looked so handsome and debonair, and the odds against him were so great.

“I’d rather not go into Erceldonne’s house,” he hesitated, “but there’s so much to say. And you can’t stay out here.”

“I don’t think you can either,” he said dryly.

Then Beryl had said nothing! But there had been no time. And after all, why should he trust their safety to a madman’s word?

“Perhaps so,” he returned irrelevantly, entering and fastening the door. “Look here. I—I wonder if you’ll think I’ve behaved like a blackguard? I don’t know. I mean to marry that girl, and I haven’t one farthing to rub against another, while she—you heard what Erceldonne said about her?”

“You told her so?”

“Not about the money, nor anything but myself. I—oh, it’s been a mad evening! Do you know she saw that crazy old man and spoke to him?”

“Then she did scream!” said Andria sharply.

“Yes: but when I got there she had tamed him as she tamed the jaguars. He could have killed her, but instead she says he promised not to hurt us any more.”

Andria turned swiftly away from the lamp that he might not see her face as Egerton’s story about the madman came back to her. The remembrance of all it must mean chilled her to the bone.

“Begin at the beginning,” she temporized. “How did she get away from——” she could not say the name. She sat silent as he obeyed. If Egerton’s story were true, that jabbering lunatic’s daughter must have been Beryl’s mother! And yet, how could she tell it to Heriot?

A queer, dull passion rose in her and seemed to choke down the words she would have tried, perhaps, to say. Heriot was all that really stood between Raimond and Beryl—let him find out her history for himself.

“Besides, I don’t believe it!” she thought, and knew she lied. She scarcely dared look up lest he might ask if she knew who the crazy creature was that haunted the place.

“Mr. Heriot,” she said quickly, “you’re in earnest about Beryl?”

“Yes,” he answered very quietly, but she saw his mouth tighten. “What right Erceldonne has to her I don’t know, but it isn’t any better than mine. As for her being rich,” with a quick, sweet laugh, “when I get her away from here I’ll never inquire about her fortune.”

“Or her people?” She could not keep in the dangerous question.

“I don’t care who she is as long as she’s my wife.” But she could not salve her conscience with the answer; she knew he would care. “Once we’re out of this, and I’ve settled with her delightful friends down there”—with a motion of his head toward the harbor.

“You can’t settle with him!” said Andria quickly. “Do you mean you are going to meet them in the morning?”

“I fail to see any other way,” he replied, laughing. “Why?”

“Do you know what facing them would mean?” There was an indescribable flatness in her voice. “None of us would ever get away from the island, except perhaps Beryl, and what would become of her I know better than you.”

“He wouldn’t marry her against her will,” he said shortly. “And as for carrying her off, he couldn’t keep her. There is a law in England.”

“There’s no law for the dead—I mean you and I could never rescue her, for we—they would never let us leave this island alive! You, because you love the girl; I because——” but she could not go on, and he knew well enough that a deserted and discarded woman would get short rope from Raimond Erle.

She was right, of course; an open struggle would be madness. Erle and Erceldonne he might manage, but the yacht’s crew could easily overpower a man who had no revolver. And yet he ached to try the fight.

Andria looked at him, with hot, smarting eyes.

“Twenty to one,” she said slowly. “Three of them you might account for, with my dagger, and then you would tell no tales! And Beryl, married to Raimond, would kill herself.”

“What else can I do?”

“Go away,” she said very gently. “No, don’t look like that!” for he was staring at her as if she had lost her senses. “You think I would play into Raimond’s hands if you did? You don’t know women! If he had loved me still I might have been his willing tool, I’m bad enough for that. But now”—her voice sank to an ugly whisper—“I’m all hatred for him; when I think of him I burn like fire. I only live to thwart him, to pay some of an old score. Oh! talk of something else!” she cried, with a sudden wild outbreak. “It is nothing to you that I wake at night and long to kill him with my hands.”

Heriot turned his eyes away from her ashy face. Once he would have laughed at believing in that Andria Erle whose name had been a byword, but he trusted her now. If he had trusted her before this night all might have been safely away by this time. But as it was he knew her broken heart and her broken pride would fight a better battle for the girl he loved than all his strength could do.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “You have a plan?”

Andria nodded.

“I want you to go and find a village and get a boat. You are the only one who can do it. But you must go alone, for if you took Beryl and me, even if we reached a town Egerton’s steamer would be there before us and cut us off. He knows every inch of the island. He’d guess where we were going—that is, if there’s a town to get at, as Salome says.”

“There must be,” he answered quickly. “This is either Flores or Corvo, I don’t know which. But on the eastern side of each there’s a town.”

“Across the mountain?”

“Yes. Santa Cruz in Flores, Rosario in Corvo; either would do. But I think this is Flores. We left Fayal for Grasiosa and were blown off our course by a southeast wind. The boat must have gone to pieces on the southeast point of Flores—there was too much east in the wind for Corvo.”

“Then we’ll suppose we’re on the southwest side of Flores. How far would it be to Santa Cruz?”

“Ten miles, as the crow flies. Twenty or more, allowing for the mountain and no track. I could be there to-morrow.”

“And get a boat and sail back. You could slip into some little bay and come for us at dawn the day after, if you’d had a fair wind. I’ll bring food, and we could hide in some tiny inlet the yacht would never notice if they sailed round the island till doomsday. Then when they get tired and go, we can sail to Fayal. How far is it?”

“A hundred and fifty miles or so. You wouldn’t be afraid in an open boat?”

“I’d take her away from him if we had to go on a raft,” she said hardly. “Come and eat now, and then you’d better go. Have you a compass?”

“I don’t want one. I can go by my watch and the sun. You don’t think they’ll try to take you both while I’m gone?”

“They won’t try to take me, and I don’t think they’ll dare to hurry her so. Raimond will take his time, even in making love. And he won’t find her very kind, if she’s promised to marry you.”

“She hasn’t, in so many words.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Andria answered wearily. “She means it. Come and eat; you must be on your way before daylight. You’re not afraid of the man and his beasts?”

“I’m afraid to leave you alone here for two days,” he said shortly. “I tell you plainly I don’t like it.”

She had opened the door into the dining-room where her neglected dinner stood cold on the table. Under the bright light of the hanging lamp she turned on him with a wild passion that there was no gainsaying.

“Listen to me!” she cried—and if her face was ghastly, over her black gown her red-brown hair shone like fire and her eyes swayed him, for all their weariness and red rims—“listen to me. The girl is yours, but the man is mine! It is my quarrel, and I will settle my debts for myself. If you stay you may kill him before you’re killed yourself, if it comes to main force; but do you think it is death I want for the man who’s killed all the good in me? I want more than that. I want him to live, with all his schemes ruined; to suffer as he has made me suffer; to starve as he turned me out to starve. If he gets the girl he will have to kill me first—I, that was bone of his bone! But it won’t come to that. I’ll put him off. I’ll make Beryl make time; I’ll tell her my secret that has ruined me, body and soul. But there won’t be any need before you’re back,” and with a sudden listlessness she sat down at the table. “Eat his meat and drink his wine; it will be as good a weapon against him as a revolver,” she said, with an evil look in her half-closed eyes. But he knew it was not she, but what a man had made her, that had taught her that look.

“I’ve no money,” he began shamefacedly.

“I have. Salome’s wages,” and she drew a roll of gold out of her pocket. “Salome’s wages for Erceldonne’s work!” but her laugh made Heriot wince.

“I’ll go now!” he said, pushing back his plate. “Tell her!”

Andria could only nod.

She was helping Beryl to freedom and happiness, and to what was she helping herself? Only to the just payment for her broken life. Even Mother Benedicta could not blame her.

“So,” she said, very low; “the dawn is coming. But be quick. I can’t promise to protect her for more than three days.”

“I’ll be back in one—at dawn to-morrow.”

Andria sprang to her feet.

“Hush!” she whispered. “Did you hear anything?”

Heriot shook his head.

“You’re done up, tired out,” he returned gently. “There’s nothing—not a sound!”

For sole answer she put out the light. He felt her hand on his wrist as she led him in the dark across the room and out on a disused veranda.

“Go this way, and be quick, quick!” she cried in the same toneless whisper. “It’s the only chance to save her now.”

She watched him as he ran across a narrow belt of moonlight and disappeared in the blackness of the scrub. Then, noiseless in her stocking feet, she searched every inch of the wide veranda round the house.

There was no one there, no one in the garden. Her wrought-up nerves must have deceived her, and it had been fancy that she heard out of the darkness of the veranda behind the dining-room Egerton’s uncontrollable, cackling laugh.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A SEALED PACKET.

Reassure herself as she might, Andria fairly fled through the empty passages to Beryl’s room.

“I’m worn out,” she thought; “I’m beginning to imagine things. It couldn’t have been Egerton’s laugh I heard, for he wouldn’t dare come here at night—and he couldn’t have known he’d any reason to watch us.” But argue as she liked, some sound had shaken her nerves till she dared not strike a light lest some watcher outside might see.

“Beryl,” she said, standing by the girl’s bed in the dark, “Beryl!”

“Hush!” said a voice, “I’m here,” and Andria made out a white figure by the window, and groped to the girl’s side. “Something woke me, I thought. Andria, I thought I heard a shot! Where’s Mr. Heriot?”

“A shot!” Andria turned cold, till she remembered she had watched him safely out of sight and not a sound had broken the stillness. “You couldn’t have,” she said, bringing all her common sense to her aid; “you must have been dreaming! He’s gone away, Beryl. I made him go.”

“Gone! Where—what for?” she stared in the dark.

“I sent him. I was afraid to let him stay. Beryl, we’re in a dreadful place. His going was the only chance to save us.”

“What do you mean he’s to save us from?” cried Beryl, stamping her bare foot. “If there’s anything to save us from he’d better be here.” She was wild with misery. That was what his half-hearted answer had meant, and he did not care enough even to bid her good-by.

“He couldn’t do anything here. They’d kill him if they found him. Do you know what I heard to-night?”

But the girl did not answer. She was putting on her clothes in the dark.

“Why did you send him—what for?” she asked harshly.

“I sent him to a town—he says there is one—to get a boat and come back and take us away. It’s all we can do. Egerton isn’t Egerton at all, he only calls himself that, and he means to carry you off and marry you to Mr. Erle or leave you here to die.”

“I’ll never go with him. Why did you send Mr. Heriot away? There’d be time after we’re left here to run away in a boat.”

“There’d be no time for anything, for Heriot and me.” But the words did not touch the girl. For the first time a distrust of Andria seized her.

“You sent him away because he loves me!” she cried. “I don’t believe Mr. Erle wants to marry me. I’ve believed everything you say, like a fool, and I don’t even know why you call yourself Holbeach. For all I know your name may be Heriot. He knew you when he came here.”

“My God!” said Andria Erle. No blow of her life had ever hurt her like this one. She pulled a sealed envelope from the bosom of her dress and thrust it passionately into Beryl’s hand.

“Look at that, and you’ll see my name,” she cried, “and may God forgive you! I swear before Him that Heriot is not and never was anything to me.”

Something in the utter agony of the voice broke through the suspicion, the jealousy, of Beryl Corselas’ heart.

“Andria, Andria!” she cried. “Forgive me! I don’t want to know who you are, I don’t care, except that you’re my Andria. I’m wild; if Heriot loved me he wouldn’t have gone, and he may have gone to his death. I must go out and find the old man and his cats. I’m frightened what they may do.”

“Not love you—Heriot! He loves you enough not to care that you’re——” she stopped. She could not tell and there was no chance now, for the girl was past her like a whirlwind.

If she had known, she could have found a better way, and now it might be too late. These very jaguars she had kissed and stroked might even now be tearing Heriot’s flesh out on the hillside. With a throat that was dry with fear for him, she stood in the garden and quavered out her strange, crooning song. She believed Andria, and yet, oh! if Heriot would only come back and swear to her that he loved her!

The moon had set, and in the hushed darkness that comes before dawn the woods lay silent and terrible. Trembling and desperate the girl crooned on, and presently from far away there came a low, wailing cry. It was so far off that she shook for fear she was too late. Staring vainly into the darkness in the direction Heriot must have taken, she almost cried out as a cold hand touched hers from behind. The old man, bent almost double, was at her feet, his dreadful pets behind him.

“Where have you been?” she cried, agonized loathing in her voice. “What have you done?”

“Little dearest,” he answered submissively, “you told me to go and I went. I was asleep; my cats were tired, for it is nearly dawn.”

“Have you seen any one?” her strong young hand gripped him fiercely. “Tell me!”

“No one.”

“Oh, listen!” Beryl said, tears of relief in her hot eyes, for the man spoke quite sanely and there was truth in his voice. “I told you to-night you must not hurt that man who came to me——”

“We have not touched him, querida mia,” he answered, cringing under her hard grasp. “Was that why you called?”

“No,” she sobbed. “Try to understand. I sent him to the town—there is a town?”

“Yes,” he muttered, “a town of cruelty, where animals are beaten until they die, and men laugh at you if you ask for bread.”

“Well, he’s gone there, to get a boat and come back for me. You must catch him and bring him back now. Tell him if he loves me he must come back, but not to the house. You and he must hide near it, for that man in the yacht wants to carry me off.”

The dawn had come on them as she spoke, and in the sudden, wan light, she saw his face flush with sudden fury.

“Do you understand?” she cried sharply. “You must make him hide, or we shall all be killed. But you must be ready to fight for me when I call you.”

“Fight!” the crazy old voice rang out with a sound that made the two great beasts behind him bristle up and lash their tails. “We will kill! My cats will kill. We would have fought for you last time, but we were too late. Now you have come back he shall never get you again.” He began to leer and jabber at her until, brave as she was, she feared him. Would a thing so crazy ever distinguish between Heriot and another?

“If you save me you shall never leave me again,” she said very slowly, and with that same touch with which she made the jaguars obey her, she laid her hand on his wrinkled, repulsive forehead.

“Querida mia!” he stammered, and for the first time he met her eyes.

“See,” he said painfully, “I understand. This is your lover in the woods, but you will not leave the old man for him. And the black-eyed one shall not steal you as he did before. We, your lover and I, will hide near the house with the cats. When we are there you will hear my cats laughing, laughing loud, till the black-eyed one’s blood turns to water. And when you call us we will come. We will not let him get you.”

“Not me, nor the woman with red hair.”

“I bit her. I will never bite her again,” he shuffled with shame. “I will go now.”

“Wait!” she cried. “Can you speak English?”

“English?” he clenched his hands. “No, no English! It was English took you away.”

“Then take this,” she pulled the beryl ring off her finger, “and tell him to come back. He must know Spanish enough for that.”

“At noon we will be back. My cats will sleep there in the shade,” he pointed to an oleander thicket. “But first they shall laugh till you hear them.”

He turned and ran, bent so low that he might have been a beast like the sinuous, spotted things that followed him. Almost before she could draw breath they had all disappeared in the scrub. Oh, it was an ill-omened messenger to send! And yet Beryl was certain that to let Heriot go would mean his coming back to an empty house—or worse.

“Did you find Heriot?” said Andria, when the girl returned, pale and soaked with dew.

“I didn’t try.” She turned her face away as she told what she had done.

“Andria,” she whispered, wan in the first sun rays, “I wish I knew who I was! For I can’t help thinking I—I remember that crazy man’s face. I can’t be anything to him. Oh, tell me I can’t!”

Andria could not answer. For pity could not tell this girl who played with jaguars that her mother, the madman’s daughter, had done the same.

“You dreamed it,” she faltered, “you could never have seen him. You were too little when you came to the convent to remember anything,” but as she lied she turned away, sick at heart.

Erle would marry the girl for his own ends. He would not care one straw for the madness in her blood. But if she found out, would she ever let Heriot call her wife? Child as she was, Andria knew that was beyond her.

“Aren’t you going to take what I gave you?” she said, pointing to that big envelope on the floor.

“Yes,” replied Beryl deliberately, “but only to remind myself I was a beast. I won’t open it. I’ll keep it. It’s none of my business why you call yourself Holbeach.”

Even then Andria could not bring her shame to her lips. Beryl should never know if she could help it. If not, she had the envelope; it would save her if Heriot were not back and Raimond got her. He might swear till he was black in the face and his own handwriting would damn him.

“We may just have a scene and be left here,” thought Andria, “but somehow I don’t think so.” She looked from her bedroom window with weary eyes and saw there was no sign of any one coming off the yacht. “I wish I knew just what they meant to do.”

But it would have comforted her very little if any one had told her that Brian Heriot had known these two hours past.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE HAND OF FATE.

“Thou sleepest? Awake!

What darest thou get for her sake?”

Mr. Egerton stood in his cabin on the Flores making a hasty toilet.

His thin face was savage as he shaved, and his hand shook as if from bodily fatigue.

“Why the devil doesn’t Raimond come?” he thought, and gashed his cheek till he swore aloud, though at the same instant the door had opened on his son, a disheveled object in silk pajamas.

“You’d better sit down and wait a moment!” said the newcomer. “Have a drink?”

Erceldonne mopped his bleeding face.

“Have the goodness not to drawl, I hate it,” he said angrily. “You can’t be as indifferent as you pretend after the night’s work!”

“I’m not. I’m much less indifferent,” he said, with a short laugh. “I begin to have a hankering after that little devil, now since she’s been sharp enough to deceive you. I believe if you threw a girl into the sea she’d come up smiling in some man’s arms!”

“It wasn’t the girl. It was that damned governess. But how the man ever got here——”

“Doesn’t matter now, that I can see,” answered Egerton, with a shrug. “You’re sure it was the governess? I thought you said she was old.”

“I said she was an excellent woman,” replied Egerton dryly.

“All the same. But Mattel said he saw the girl in his arms. Heriot’s! And the last man in the world to——But it doesn’t matter.”

“I didn’t believe Mattel, like a fool! Or we could——”

“We couldn’t have done any better. I thought it was all up when I heard you laugh and saw the light go out. I was in time, though. But, by the Lord, if I’d known it was Heriot I don’t think I’d have done it!”

“You would have turned out Erceldonne penniless, I suppose, and let him walk into your shoes! You’re sure it’s all right?”

“Yes, I tell you!” said Raimond, with sudden vicious savagery. “Let it alone!” It was the son who was pale now, not the father.

“Curse Mattel and his prowling on shore,” he added, biting his mustache. But the girl he had been willing to marry for her money—and something else—had suddenly grown desirable to him since another man had found her fair. She would be hard to get, too, judging from the way she had slipped from him to Heriot—and nothing but the unattainable was ever coveted by Raimond Erle. If Andria had not been too faithful he might have been at her feet still.

“If it hadn’t been for Mattel,” said Erceldonne practically, “we’d never have known there was a man on the island. If Heriot kissed the girl he would have married her.” The past conditional came curiously, but to the listener it sounded natural enough.

“For God’s sake, wash your face!” he said, with womanish disgust, or perhaps because it was not so long since he had cleansed a like red stain from his hands. “And throw away the water. Mattel might think things if he saw it was bloody. He didn’t follow us, I suppose!”

“Mattel is a Maltese thief, who daren’t think or do anything,” but he was careful enough to follow his son’s advice. “No one knows anything but you and me,” and his hand grew unsteady again as he thought of the awful danger he had dared last night for the sake of Raimond—Raimond and Erceldonne.

Beryl Corselas had builded worse than she knew when she had bidden the madman and his dreadful servants to keep far away on the night of all nights when they might have defended her. But all Erceldonne had thought was that luck was on his side still.

“I suppose there’s no reason to stay on here,” said Erle, with a glance of loathing out the port-hole. “I’ll do what I can with the girl and we’ll take her and the governess off to-night. I can make love to her, if I must, at sea.”

Erceldonne nodded. He was himself again. No one would have known him for the man of two hours before.

“The sooner the better,” he returned briefly. “Before they have time to wonder why he doesn’t come back.”

“Let him alone!” cried Raimond, with that black rage again. “If you keep harping on him I’ll chuck the whole thing. I don’t care a damn for the succession, it’s only the money—and that won’t make me stand your conversation!”

“Then you’d better tell the girl so,” said Erceldonne dryly. “Do you suppose she is going to avoid the subject?”

“I know it. She thinks we don’t know anything about him,” replied Raimond grimly. “She won’t dare give herself away. And once married to her——” he laughed, and Andria might have known why.

But Andria, for once, was wearied out. It was no more than eight o’clock and she knew Raimond never faced existence till eleven. It seemed safe to sleep, and sleep she must, or she could not think or act. If Salome came in softly and darkened the room it was without an idea of the mischief she was doing, nor how Andria Erle would wake. Beryl, with a strange color in her cheeks, a strange brightness in her tawny eyes, was freshly dressed and out even as Andria closed her eyes. From pure humiliation she had put that thin, sealed packet in her pocket, but she was not thinking of it now. Up and down the garden she stepped with a quiet fierceness that might have been learned from the jaguars she played with. There was no sign of the crazy old man, let her call and search as she would; no sign of Heriot, and her heart grew full of fear.

Yet there seemed little cause for terror.

If she had thought to see Egerton and his son come hurrying up from the yacht to carry her off she was mistaken. Neither of them appeared.

She wondered wretchedly why Heriot had left her. Surely not because they said she had money; it meant nothing to her, instinct told her little to Heriot. Why did he not come back?

She was afraid of these two men who had come with lies. Why should Erceldonne call himself Egerton to a girl to whom neither name meant anything? It came over her sharply that an obscure Mr. Egerton might leave England unobserved in a yacht, while Lord Erceldonne’s departure would have been chronicled in all the papers.

“Whatever he means to do with me, he’ll do it secretly,” she thought, trembling. “But oh, if I could only hear the cats scream! I must just wait. Only wait.”

But though she waited till the sun rose high and the hours passed at noon, she was waiting still.

And it was so that Raimond Erle came up from the shore and saw her; standing straight and tall in the blazing sun among the gorgeous flowers; young, lithe, magnificent with her dusky hair and her golden eyes, and that strange color on her cheeks; a woman any man might covet. And for the first time he cared nothing for the thing he had done.

Every bit of color went from her face as she saw who it was, though she had known the step was not Heriot’s.

“Well,” she said defiantly, “what do you want?”

“Only to say good morning. You’re not going to run away again, are you?” for she had moved restlessly under his eyes.

“I don’t want to run away. Why should I?” she replied, with a slow glance of dislike she had not known the trick of yesterday. “I want to talk. When is—Mr. Egerton—going to take us away?”

“To-day, if you like. But don’t talk here, it’s too scorching. Come into the house.” There was nothing but his own comfort in the suggestion, but his glance said it was hers.

The girl shaded her eyes and looked once round the empty garden, the stirless noontide woods. There was not a soul.

“Come in, then.” She had caught her breath curiously. She led the way, not into the house itself, but up by an outside stair to the veranda that opened off Andria’s bedroom. From it she could see the faintest signal from the hillside down which Heriot must come, if he came in time; would be within call of Andria, sleeping like the dead behind her closed shutters.

Erle looked at her.

She had a crushed hibiscus blossom in her hand that was not so crimson as her mouth. He would get her by fair means or foul, if it were only for that and her tawny eyes.

“So you’re anxious to get away?” he said slowly, but she hesitated instead of assenting.

“I don’t see why I was brought here at all!” she returned at last, frowning.

He smiled.

“Don’t you? I do. Look at me, don’t you remember me?”

“Look at me!”—with what different eyes another man had said those very words!

“Remember you!” she retorted. “No; how could I?”

But she shivered. The man was lying, as Andria had warned her he would lie.

“Think!” he said. “Have you forgotten one evening at Blackpool station? And a frightened girl who stood there without anywhere to go? Because I remember, if you don’t.”

But like a flash it had come back to her. His white duck clothes made him look different, but it was the same face she had seen. And she remembered there had been no pity in the man’s eyes as he watched her.

“You do remember!” he said. “Well, don’t be angry if I tell you something. I went away and you haunted me. I couldn’t forget you. When I heard of the girl found starving in the wreck I knew it was you. I sent my father to get you from—the woman”—with a momentary hesitation, since he had never known exactly about that part of the business and dared not invent—“who had adopted you. It was I who suggested bringing you here,” he continued calmly lying. “I knew convent arms are long and you weren’t safe in England. But if you want to go back you can, though it’s a living grave, a convent, for a beautiful girl,” he spoke dreamily, and so impersonally that yesterday she would not have noticed the flattery.

“Why did you care?” abruptly. “I was nothing to you.”

“I wanted to help you live your life,” he said, with a queer shrug. “That was all. Oh! you are a child still. You’ve seen nothing. Not diamonds, nor satin gowns, nor balls where the music gets into your blood and you know half the men in the room are mad about you.”

“To that life?” said Beryl slowly, for Brian Heriot had told her none of these things. Yet she searched the empty hillside once more with her eyes.

“That, and more. I don’t know why I cared you should be saved from the convent, but I did. You can go back, as I said, if you like.”

“No!” she said, with a shudder, remembering only the cruelty of Mother Felicitas and nothing of the kindness of the other nuns. “They said I had no name, that I was a charity child. Am I? If you know anything about me, tell me!” she could not keep back the question, though she knew it was useless, but the slow, insolent answer turned her blood to fire.

“You are Beryl, and you have golden eyes. I don’t know, or care for anything more.”

“You do know who I am!” she flashed out at him, “else why would your father trouble with me? If he is your father and not your uncle, as you said.”

His face changed ever so slightly. Well, Heriot was paid for talking!

“I know nothing but that I have done my best to help you from that very first night I saw you,” he said, very low.

There was a passion on his face there had never been on Heriot’s, but she was not old enough to know that passion in a man is the very last reason for a woman to trust in him. And the sudden softening of the haggard lines round his mouth, the widening of his eyes, made her for the first time wonder if, after all, he were speaking the truth.

“Where do you want to take me?” She was staring at him with great, fascinated eyes. If he had been like this yesterday she would never have run away from him, unwarned as she was then.

“Back to England—to London—to the world. Why should you be buried here?” he said slowly.

“But you said it wasn’t safe,” she faltered. “The convent——”

“Can’t recall you if you’ll let me take care of you,” he answered, with his voice utterly caressing. “Will you?”

For the first time she saw what he meant, what he had been meaning all along. And it was just what Andria had said. With a start of fright she sprang up.

“Do you mean you want me to marry you?” she cried, wide-eyed, and, without her will, Heriot’s face sprang to her memory.

She was so beautiful as she stood aghast and trembling that the man lost his head.

“Yes,” he said, “just that!” and before she could move had caught her to him and kissed her madly.

She could not cry out because his lips crushed her mouth, but the stifled moan would have brought any other man to his senses. She fought against him till her lips were free.

“I hate you,” she stormed. “Why did I ever listen to you when Andria—ah!” she screamed at the top of her voice. “Andria!”

If she had stabbed him he could not have let her go more suddenly.

“What do you mean?” he said. “Who is Andria?”

But it was another voice that answered him from behind his back.

“I!” said Andria Erle, standing like a ghost in her white dressing-gown between the open green shutters of her bedroom window.

Raimond Erle turned livid.

It was Andria; Andria who was the governess, who had been engaged to take care of the only girl in the world she should never have met!

He saw once more the pale face, the red-brown hair of the woman he had called his wife—and the only emotion it brought him was furious hatred.

He looked from her to Beryl and back again and knew what he must do.

“And who,” he said calmly, “are you?”

“No one,” she answered steadily, “now! Shall I tell you who I was?”

Her eyes blazed at him, standing at the window of the very room where she had thanked God he had come back to her. The man shrugged his shoulders.

“No,” he said, “stand back! I will tell you what you were, and are. A woman who is no fit companion for an innocent girl, who is here under false pretenses and a feigned name.”

His quick ear had caught footsteps coming up the stairs, and as Andria caught her breath at the words that were true enough in their way, Raimond Erle turned to his father.

“So this is your governess!” he cried, before she could speak. “Do you know who she is? A woman who was the talk of all London—a woman no girl should so much as see!”

“Raimond!” She had been his wife for five years, or she thought so; small wonder she cried out as if he had struck her. She reeled where she stood.

“Take the girl away,” said Erle savagely. “Don’t you understand?”

But at that cry of his son’s name Lord Erceldonne had understood indeed.

It was this woman and no other who had enslaved Raimond for five years, and the very irony of fate had brought her here to ruin him.

“Andria, what does he mean? What does he know about you?”

Beryl had sprung between the two men and flung her arms round Andria’s neck. But the woman stood cold as marble.

“Come!” said Erceldonne, between his teeth. He laid his hand on Beryl’s shoulder and she tore it away.

“Andria, speak to me, don’t mind them!” she cried. “I believe in you. I don’t care what they say, Andria, darling.”

Erle’s discarded wife caught her in her arms and stood back, knowing that the time was come.

“I am what you made me!” she cried to the man whom once she had loved. “I will take care you have no other girl to torture as you have tortured me. Oh, I know why you want her, why you changed your minds about letting her die here!” She came a step nearer to Erle, still holding Beryl clasped in one arm. “But you forgot me!”

Her breast heaved as if she could not breathe. She kept her eyes on Raimond’s face and never saw Erceldonne as he slipped behind her.

There was no stopping the tongue of a furious woman, but if Beryl heard her story the game was up. And without the girl, ruin stared him in the face. Dead or alive, they must have her, and there was no driving Raimond when he had the bit in his teeth. He would have her quick, not dead, in spite of all the discarded women in London.

“Come,” he repeated, with a voice he tried to make shocked but only made angry. “This is no place for you. And as for you, madam,” to Andria, “we will leave you to the society of your friend, Mr. Heriot. I may say that what I saw last night shocked and pained me inexpressibly.”

He took Beryl by the arm, but she struck back at him wildly, with all the strength of her young arm. For an instant the man staggered; the next he had caught his son’s eye.

“Settle it,” he said, with an ugly word. And with hands that were strong as steel he forced the two women apart. It was done so dexterously that neither had time to make a sound, but the girl turned on him viciously, wrenched away from him, and fell backward down the wooden stairs. As she fell she screamed, but another cry covered it.

Half an hour afterward Raimond Erle came quietly out of a house that seemed strangely still. There was blood on his hand and he wiped it away with fastidious care.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A MURDER IN THE DARK.

“Salome, I am going to shut up the house and take all the ladies away! They have gone down to the yacht already. Pack your things, and be as quick as you can, the three of you. I don’t want to waste any time in getting off.”

The servants’ quarters were on the other side of the house from Andria’s shaded veranda; the three women had heard nothing as they sat chattering with the doors shut to keep out the noontide heat. Yet Salome leaped to her feet with a sudden foreboding, as she saw her master open the door.

There was a look on his face she had reason to know, and as he spoke her own grew ashy. Yet to Chloe and Amelia Jane his matter-of-fact words were joyful tidings indeed, and scarcely uttered before they were gone to gather their belongings. But Salome stood just as she was when she sprang up and saw her master’s face.

“Go!” he said sharply. “I’ve no time to wait for you.”

“Where’m I going?” she asked sullenly. “Where’ve I got to go?”

“Where you like, but out of this and away from me! I’ve no further use for a servant who harbors men in my house in secret.”

So he knew! Salome’s face grew a shade more gray.

“He’s gone!” she said. “He went last night.”

“He’s gone, but you’ll go, too!” he answered, with a meaning not lost on her. “Get your things.”

“Master, master!” her voice came strangled as she threw herself at his feet. “I can’t go nowhere, you know dat.”

“It’s no concern of mine. I’ve hidden you long enough when you betray me. You can come or stay, or drown or hang, as you like. Thank your stars I don’t send you back to Jamaica! You fool, who’s to know you in England?”

But she had seen his eyes as she scrambled to her feet. There would be no England for her. She knew too much to leave, and too much to tell where he was going. A dark night, a high wind and a heavy sea, and—even her miserable life was dear to her!

“Dat’s true, dey’s no one’ll know me in England,” she said softly; too softly if the man had been his usual acute self. She turned quietly away and followed the other women.

Her master’s heart “beat quick and thick, like a madman on a drum,” as he stood in the scorching courtyard. No one could get to the big house without crossing the paved yard, which no one should do. Raimond, with his white sleeve rolled up till an ugly stain was hidden, had carried Beryl down to the yacht. Her fall had stunned her, and she hung heavy like the dead in his arms. What he had begun in Andria’s room the crazy man and his jaguars would finish, when the house lay empty and deserted, with no one to bar the doors.

Erceldonne turned with a sharp word as the three black servants came out, each with a bundle on her head.

Something had quieted Chloe and Amelia Jane, or else it was the dreaded presence of their master that lent speed to their feet as they hurried down the path before him. Salome had never opened her lips as she gathered up her clothes. She walked before Egerton with a slowness that maddened him, for he dared not precede her. The great door of the house stood open as they passed, and she saw it. What man in his senses would go away and leave his house open, for the things that haunted the place to ravage? Yet she said nothing as they went on in the blazing sun.

There was not a sound anywhere; not a breeze even, when they reached the corner of the path and saw the open bay before them, with the boat waiting at the shore and Chloe and Amelia Jane already in it in their haste to be gone. Yet even Chloe and ’Melia Jane leaped to their feet at the sudden strident howl that waked the noonday hush. They had heard that cry before; in the night it had broken their dreams, but in the broad daylight it brought the terror of death on them.

From far up behind the house it rang, something between a wail and a scream, but full of a hideous menace, a ravening fierceness. Before Erceldonne could draw breath, it seemed as though hell had broken loose behind him. Sharp, snarling cries ran under that awful, ceaseless wailing, and each second were louder and louder.

“Run!” cried the man, with white lips, feeling in his pocket for the revolver that was not there. “Run!”

But Salome, like a black statue, stood in his way.

“Dey smells de white blood,” she said politely. “De meat fur de jaguars’ wedding.”

With a furious word, Erceldonne sprang past her. He was brave enough, but not for the terror that runs scenting its prey in daylight. He tripped and fell headlong over the bundle she threw in front of him, but before she could seize him he was up on his feet and running wildly. In the hideous uproar that came nearer and nearer, Salome laughed.

“Run, run!” she screamed aloud. “You ain’t going quick enough; dey got de heels of you!” She bowed and swayed in horrible derision, as he stumbled, recovered himself, and tore on. The next instant she had taken to her heels and was running faster than Erceldonne himself. But not to the boat. Something yellow and white had flashed by her, hunting silently, without a sound. By instinct, she ran, she knew not where; and as she ran she shrieked.

The Italian captain of the Flores had been a cutthroat from his youth up, and now made an excellent livelihood by hiring out his yacht and asking no questions. But even he was pale as he stood on the bridge and took the boat away from that accursed island. That there should be wild animals in so desolate a place seemed natural enough to a man who knew nothing of the Azores except the name; yet he had never seen even tigers so fierce as to hunt men in broad day. And hunt they had. Mr. Egerton had saved his life by a bare fifty yards, and the screams of the black servants, who had been too fat to run, rang in the captain’s ears still.

No wonder the signorina had been carried on board half-dead, or that the two colored women crouched, weeping, on the deck.

“The place is accursed,” he said sharply to his first officer, who would have liked to stay and hunt the strange, fierce beast that had stood snarling at the very water’s edge and disappeared like magic as he drew his revolver. “If Mattel had not been a son of the devil he would not have got off in his skin last night.”

Mr. Raimond Erle drew a long breath of relief as he sat with his father in the saloon and heard the steady sound of the screw. He glanced at Erceldonne, seated opposite him, and aged by ten years by that flight down the glaring hillside.

“That was a damned lucky escape,” he said slowly. “I didn’t half-believe in your beasts before. But they’ve done well by you now!”

“How?”

Erceldonne’s breath came unevenly still.

“Do you ever read the papers?” but his own hand shook as he lifted his whisky and soda, for, for form’s sake, the two sat at luncheon, waited on by the servants, who could not understand a word they said. “Well, it will be an item: ‘Strange and Terrible Story From’—we can find a place. But it will go like this:

“‘News comes through Reuter’s Agency’—and they shall get their information in some very natural way that can’t be challenged—‘news comes through Reuter’s Agency that the Honorable Brian Heriot, heir-presumptive to Baron Heriot, and his wife have been killed while jaguar-hunting in—South America? The late Mr. Heriot was at one time well known in London society, and his wife, who perished with him, was a whilom celebrated beauty, known, for want of another name, as “The Lovely Andria.” The present Lord Heriot is unmarried and the title will devolve on the Heriots of Maxwellton. No particulars of the tragedy have yet been obtained by our correspondent.’ There, that will explain the sad tale we have to tell our charges, and everything will be perfectly open and aboveboard!”

The whisky had warmed him. He never flinched at the thought of how Andria Erle must die.

“Have you no sense?” cried Erceldonne angrily.

“We dare not set any rumors going.”

“Public press—nothing to do with us. Some Englishman is certain to have been killed jaguar-hunting—South America is a big place, and his name will do for the first unidentified fool that gets eaten. Put a thing into people’s heads and they’ll think it.”

“That won’t explain the girl knowing of it!”

Raimond leaned across the table and spoke so low his father could just hear.

“The girl is my affair,” he said slowly. “You made a fool of yourself with your island and your governess, and your fright of an old woman over whom you knew you had the whip-hand the instant you found the girl. If it hadn’t been for your crazy friend and his jaguars we should have been up a tree. When Beryl’s my wife we can find out who she is—and no reverend mother can get her away then!”

“How do you propose to make her sign the register? I’ve no reason to suppose you can make a marriage under a false name any more legal than the rest of the world!” said his father cynically.

“That’s my concern,” answered Raimond fiercely. “You’ve managed this business so far, and you’ve made a mess of it. If it hadn’t been for you carrying off the girl like a pirate in a dime novel and getting the only woman you had reason to fear for her governess, there would have been no trouble. The girl was coming to me like a tame bird when that red-haired devil opened the shutters! As it is, she heard nothing to matter; your ‘excellent woman’ had evidently kept a close tongue in her head. But thanks to you, I’ve a hard job instead of an easy one. I tell you plainly that if she were not as beautiful as women are made, I’d let her go to the devil—or Mother Felicitas!”

“And her money to the convent and Erceldonne to the hammer—or you and I kicked out!”

“Exactly.”

The brief courage of whisky had died out of him; he was suddenly cold in the hot, close cabin. To Andria he gave no thought except that a millstone was gone from about his neck. But from Brian Heriot, who had been his friend, he could not get his thoughts.

That blind shot in the dark, that long carrying of a burden under which he had sweated, though his father had helped in the task; that sudden light of the match the latter had struck as they lifted a man’s body for the last time to cast it down a rocky gully that reeked with a strange, wild scent—the man who had fired the shot turned sick as the match burned out, for, in its flickering light, he had seen the face that would not leave his memory.

In his amazed and horrified recognition of the man who had been his friend, he might even then have tried to save him, but his very start of astonishment sent the body the faster into that black gully. What happened next he scarcely knew. It was all a dream of mad panic, with himself and Erceldonne flying through the night till dawn came and found them in their boat.

There was no one on watch on the deserted deck, not even Mattel knew when they returned, careful body-servant though he was. It had taken all Raimond Erle’s nerve to put on his night-clothes and lie down on his bed. He had been acting, acting ever since, except for those few minutes alone with the woman who had risen as if from the dead to balk him.

He had feigned nothing there, only given rein to his fury till, with a last jerk of his wrist, his work was done. And he was tired of feigning now.

“Listen!” he said, with outspoken brutality, “once for all. If you so much as name him to me again, I’m done with you. You can sink or swim, as you like. I will never have him spoken of in my hearing.”

For answer, a girl’s voice rang out from a shut cabin near-by, high and shrill as voices are in delirious pain.

“Brian!” it called. “Brian, where are you? Heriot, Heriot!”

For a moment the man trembled, and then the very rage of hell came over him, that it was Beryl who called on Heriot and not Andria.

So it had been for her sake that Heriot was on the island! For a moment he grinned like an angry dog; and then he saw the servants gazing at him in scared amazement, and forced himself to laugh.

“Let her call,” he said to his father, in the English they could not understand. “She’s got to call louder yet to wake the dead!”

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE DEATH-TRAP.

In the wild panic that had overtaken her, Salome ran on and on, crashing in bewilderment through the thick scrub without knowing or caring where she was going. Fat as she was, she got over the ground with marvelous speed, till she tripped on a tough vine and fell sprawling.

The jar and shock brought back her senses. At first she shook where she lay, lest the beast she had seen might leap on her and tear her life out, not caring if she were black or white. But as the minutes passed and nothing stirred anywhere, the stout colored woman scrambled up, and stood quivering and panting.

She could hear nothing, though she listened with all her might; those horrible, snarling cries no longer made the woods ring. Stupefied, she felt her arms and legs, as if to make sure they were whole, and then slowly and falteringly began to make her way back to the house with the instinct of a lost dog.

“Dey got him dat time, sure!” she thought, stumbling through the hot, dark undergrowth, a ludicrous fat figure in stained white clothes, crowned with a frizzy mop of hair that would have humiliated her, could she have seen it.

“I’ll go back to de big house; if dey ain’t gone I kin hide, and dey can’t lock me in so I can’t get out again. And I ain’t got nowhar else to go. Dese woods ain’t wholesome at night; black meat and white looking mighty like in de dark!”

But as she came cautiously out on the hillside and could see the bay, she flung herself down behind some bushes and crept on all fours into thicker cover.

The yacht was going. She could see it rounding the point.

“Glory, glory!” said the woman soberly. “Dey’s gone. I kin go up to de house and get rested, and to-morrow I’ll tramp through de woods to dat place Mr. Heriot’s went to. I guess I kin take in washing wid de best of ’em, and dey ain’t no one going to know me, neither. ’Cause a man dat’s inside a jaguar ain’t goin’ to talk—and der ain’t no one else!”

She walked on wearily to the great hall door, and was just closing it behind her when, from the hillside behind the house, the dreadful cry of a hunting jaguar brought her heart to her mouth. With frenzied haste she bolted the heavy door and the lower windows; but there came no sound of padded feet in the garden, no soft, heavy tread against window or door. Only that wailing cry rang out insistently, as if some beast called to its mate in vain.

Salome, safe in her fortress, had time to listen; and knew in another instant that it was no beast that called. The imitation was good enough for Egerton, but not for Salome, who knew the real thing.

“’Pears like de end o’ de world!” she said to herself; but, with the end of Egerton, her heart had an end of fear. “Dat crazy man’s on top dis time, but de Lawd be praised, I ain’t out on no sea dis day! Oh, my poor ladies, my poor ladies! But you’re free dis minute same as me. De master’s dead!”

She said it with a shudder, for the beast that had passed her with long, noiseless bounds had not gone so quickly that she had not had time to see the dreadful teeth in its red, drooping jaw.

From very force of habit, she turned and went round the house, inspecting each bolted door. She must sleep in here to-night, for she was too shaken to cross the courtyard with that snarling whine ringing in her ears.

She was dizzy, too, with her long run in the heat, and she climbed up-stairs painfully. It would feel safer to sleep up there, but her trembling legs would scarcely carry her.

The room at the head of the stairs had been the governess’, and the exhausted Salome turned into it, only to sink on her knees with a groan of superstitious terror.

The governess had gone. Then, who was this who lay like a log on the floor, face down?

“Lawd, Lawd!” moaned Salome, her eyes all whites in her ashy face. “Missus, missus!”

But the white thing on the floor never moved. Only the rising afternoon breeze came through the open window and lifted the long locks of loose, ruddy hair, and through the silence came that endless, blood-curdling wail of the madman outside.

Inch by inch the black woman crawled nearer, her eyes standing out with terror.

If this thing on the floor should leap up and spring at her, as ghosts and haunts were well known to do!

But it never stirred.

With the last remnant of her waning courage, Salome stretched out a shaking, black hand, and then recoiled with a yell of sheer horror. It was no ghost, but the governess herself; but, whether dead or alive, the servant could not tell. Her weariness all forgotten, she lifted the quiet body in her arms, and saw why it had lain so motionless.

On one temple was a dark bruise, a deep, oozing cut, such as might be made by the sharp edges of a man’s signet ring. And a man’s handkerchief had bound the slack wrists together; a man’s clumsy, hurried hand tied a thick, wet bath-towel over the unconscious face, and knotted the cord from the curtain cruelly tight around the slim, bare feet.

There were scissors on the toilet-table, and it took Salome no time to cut the double-knotted towel from Andria’s head and face. But it took minutes before the almost suffocated lungs did their work again. Salome was frightened as she dashed water on the swollen, crimson face.

“Set up, my lamb!” she cried quickly, when the first struggle for breath was over. “You ain’t hurt. Wait, ole Salome’ll cut your hands an’ feet loose!”

To her unutterable joy, Andria began to move. Presently, she lifted her hand to the cut on her head, but it fell again, limply.

“Dat’s right,” said Salome, fanning her, “dat’s just right. You’s coming round, honey. Lean against Salome!” She looked down at the face on her knee, and the torn, white dressing-gown, and poured eau de cologne with a lavish hand on the bare, white throat.

At the pungent scent of it, Andria’s eyelids flickered.

“Beryl,” she said, “Beryl.”

Salome nearly dropped her.

“Ain’t she here?” she cried, and something in her voice roused Andria more than all the restoratives in the world. “Oh, missus! Ain’t she in her room?” for if they had not taken one, surely they had not taken the other.

Dizzy and sick, Andria clutched at her.

“They took her,” she said thickly, as if her throat hurt her. “Salome, where are they? Why do you look like that?” She raised herself till she could see the dark face.

“Oh, missus, dey’s gone!” Salome cried wildly. “Dey’s gone in de steamer, all but him; and he’s et. De jaguar done got him.”

She pointed out the window. “Hark at dat!” she whispered. “De ole man’s singing ’cause master’s dead.”

“Gone!” Andria got somehow to her feet, and nearly fell with the pain in her swimming head. “Quick, when—did they go?” It hurt intolerably to speak, but the dizziness was passing.

Salome told her, but to the story of Egerton’s race with death Andria hardly listened. Raimond had got Beryl, and would have killed her to do it.

Mad with rage at seeing her, he had struck her down on the floor; and then, for fear of what she might come to herself and do, had tied her, hand and foot, and left her to the jaguars. She was a woman, and too faithful. There is no sin on earth a man resents so much.

“Go look through the house!” she cried, holding her aching head and feeling her hand, wet with her blood from the cut Raimond’s ring had left. But she knew the search was useless. And Egerton’s death was neither here nor there. He might have been murdered before his son’s eyes, but Raimond would not let the girl go on account of it.

“I fought so badly,” she thought, in wild self-reproach. “I made him furious. And I knew, if he were angry, he would stop at nothing. Oh, Beryl, Beryl!”

Sick at heart, with the knowledge of what lay before the girl when Raimond should tire of her—for a legitimate wife can be neglected as well as another when her novelty palls—she leaned against Salome, utterly motionless and despairing.

“If I’d a gun,” said the woman, suddenly and savagely, “I’d kill dat ole man out dere! Standing yelling at de house like a meowing cat.”

“Which man?” but, as if new life had sprung in her, Andria sat erect and listened. The cry that was enough like a jaguar’s to deceive most people, rose across the stillness, and the sound of it made the slow blood come into her pale cheeks.

Just so, Beryl had told her, would the old man make his cats cry when Heriot and he came back. But for Beryl Corselas they had come too late.

“Salome!” Andria exclaimed, and for the first time there were tears in her hopeless eyes. “It’s Mr. Heriot, he’s come back! Come, help me. We must go out, or he won’t know we’re alone.”

“Go out—and it gettin’ on to sundown! Lie down, my lamb,” said Salome coaxingly, “and rest your head.” For the poor soul could only think the blow had taken her mistress’ wits.

“No, no!” said Andria. Between laughing and crying she poured out all that Salome did not know, and saw, even then, that the woman did not believe her. “You can stay here,” she ended. “I’ll go. You know the old man won’t hurt us now.”

“Not wid little miss at our backs, p’r’aps,” said Salome grimly. “How do you know he won’t say we’ve took and killed her? Where’d we be den?”

But she followed Andria down-stairs, helped her across the garden, too stanch to leave her alone, though great beads of sweat rolled off her forehead in her fright.

“Mr. Heriot!” Andria called, leaning against Salome’s terrified bulk. “Mr. Heriot!”

But nothing answered, till, in the sudden silence that had fallen as those beastly cries ceased, her own voice echoed back to her from the wooded hillside.

“Heriot, Heriot—Heriot!” it mocked, thin and clear; and died away.

With a sob that choked her, Andria remembered that to call the old man she must croon like Beryl had done, and she could not remember the weird tune, or sing it if she could.

“Stay here,” she said. “I must go to them.”

But Salome’s heart was white.

“Might as well die as be scared to death,” she answered, with chattering teeth, and, with her arms round the swaying figure of her mistress, she walked on—to death, for all she knew.

“Mr. Heriot!” Andria called again, as they reached the outlying fringes of the impenetrable scrub. The old man’s name—if he had one—she did not know. But as she thought it, he stood before her, come out of the bushes as if by magic.

Salome groaned as only a black person can. But Andria saw the man’s face, and, for the first time, there was no fleering mockery in it. In the low sunlight he looked not the madman she had fought with in the night, but an old, miserable creature, wizened and bowed, and clothed in rags that were strangely clean. And yet she recoiled involuntarily against Salome as he ran to her, bent forward in the old way, so that his lean, knotted hands almost touched the ground.

To her utter amazement, he fell at her feet and kissed the hem of her gown. The next minute he stood up and began to talk very slowly in Spanish. What he said she could not tell, but she knew it was a string of questions. She touched her own breast with a quivering finger, then Salome pointed, as his wild eyes met hers, with utter despair, to the sea.

He understood her, for his face grew fierce, and his cry of mad rage turned her cold. To her ears, he seemed once more to be jabbering at her, but, to her wild surprise, Salome answered him. Salome, an ignorant black woman, a minute ago palsied with fright, had gone boldly to his side, and was talking swiftly enough in a strange bastard Spanish.

The old creature hid his face in his hands with a pitiful, smothered cry as he heard. Then he turned to Andria with what—if she had known it—were miserable wails for pardon, wretched gratitude that she had at least tried to save the girl whom his crazed brain still took for another.

Salome, the respectful, shook Andria as if she had been a child.

“Missus, he won’t hurt us! I told him all we knows, and he say to come to his place in de woods. Mr. Heriot dere wid him. And he say his cats is tame, ’cept when he makes dem hunt. You hear him call out when I say master’s dead? He say: ‘De vengeance o’ God!’ Just dat, over and over. Missus, de black work dat I knows been here ain’t nothin’ to what’s been done to dis poor ole man!”

“Why is Mr. Heriot in the woods?” cried Andria. “Ask him.”

“Because dey shot him; shot him like dey’d shoot a dog!” she answered bitterly. “Come, missus, come! We got to get him to de big house before dark.”

Great tears pouring down her black face, she walked on, not daring to tell that the old man had said Heriot was dead.

It had seemed a long, rough way last night in the dark to that rocky gully for the two men who sweated under their burden, with eyes everywhere for the dangers they must dare if Heriot’s end were to be sure. It was a risky thing—for the throwers—to cast an insensible man down into a jaguar’s den, and they ran for their lives afterward for what seemed miles—would have run vainly if chance had not taken the old man and his beasts to sleep elsewhere.

But it was really no distance, even for a woman swaying with pain and dizziness, by the smooth, narrow track the old man took. There was no room for two to walk abreast, and the black woman put her strong hands under Andria’s arms from behind and steadied her, for pain made her reel.

In between two high rocks they passed, and then squeezed through a narrow passage that wound and burrowed like the dried-up brook it was, between two high cliffs. Over their heads the blue sky showed like a narrow ribbon; the dark air of the passage felt like a cellar, and, with each step they took after the crazy man, a strange, wild smell grew pungent in their nostrils.

“It’s de cats,” began Salome disgustedly, and then yelled in Andria’s ear, and nearly threw her down with her start. Something had touched her skirts, and over her shoulder she saw at her very heels, what seemed an endless procession of wild beasts, walking softly in her footsteps.

“Oh, my soul!” Salome yelled again, and scuffled wildly to pass Andria. “Dey’s got me.”

The old man turned with a grin.

“Be quiet, woman!” he said, in his guttural Spanish. “Those are my sisters and brothers and their children. They will not touch you till I say—kill!” but at the word the nearest beast gave a whining snarl, and Salome, with one bound of terror, passed their master, nearly squeezing him to death, and out of the passage into a round, open space like a quarry that narrowed up into the rocky gully, where last night a murderer had thrown his victim.

But Andria cared nothing for Salome or the jaguars. Straight opposite the rocky wall of the queer place was undermined into an overhanging cave, and under it, rolled in a ragged blanket, was the motionless figure of a man.

“Heriot!” she sobbed, and ran to him. But he did not open his eyes, as she knelt beside him, and the hand she seized in hers was stone-cold in the hot, close air.

CHAPTER XXX.

MOTHER FELICITAS.

“Ah!”

It was an indescribable sound, and it stopped sweet-faced Sister De Sales in the serious business of laying out her neat little account-books.

Mother Felicitas sat in her straight-backed chair in her own parlor and gripped the table in front of her, as if only by holding fast to something could she keep from drifting out on the great sea of death.

She had not been herself since that strange disappearance of Beryl Corselas. A constant, agonized fear that ate at her heart had made even her agonized nerves give way, her step that had been noiseless, heavy and uncertain, her pale skin like parchment stretched over bone. And this morning she had heard that which wrung a cry from her stiff lips, though she was not alone to bear her terror.

“Dear mother, what is it?” cried Sister De Sales, flurriedly rising. “You are ill—suffering?”

For the reverend mother’s face was more grayish-white than the whitewashed plaster of the parlor walls.

Mother Felicitas nodded speechlessly. But for all that sudden pang at her heart, she moved her hand jerkily, so that it covered an open letter on the table.

“Water—a faintness!” she managed to say. But when Sister De Sales got back with water and wine the reverend mother was lying back in her chair.

The sister was a simple soul, and saw only that the Mother Superior’s ill turn was over; not—what the dead Mother Benedicta would have seen—that a certain pale-blue, gold-embossed note that had been conspicuous enough among a batch of business-letters had disappeared from sight.

It was the day for going over the week’s accounts, and Sister De Sales was wont to dread it, in spite of possessing a good head for figures, so sharp were the reverend mother’s sunken eyes and so keen her instant detection of a penny out in the balance-sheet. But to-day she would willingly have seen her books all proved wrong if only the superior could have strength to do it.

“You are not well, dear mother; you would see the doctor if I sent for him?” she said timidly, looking at the gray pallor of the hard face.

Mother Felicitas roused herself.

“No, sister, no!” she said, with a sort of panic, and forced her manner to its old authority. “It is nothing. I am not so young as I was, and I forget it, perhaps. But we will leave the accounts till to-morrow. I—I will rest now.”

She made no demur as the anxious sister placed a stool under her feet, but at the gentle coaxing to drink some wine she frowned harshly.

“No, no! Go,” she said, “and let me rest. Those things, as I said, can wait.”

Sister De Sales withdrew, softly, aghast. Never in all her convent-life had she known any duty postponed “till to-morrow.” The reverend mother must be very ill, indeed. She would see Sister Agnes; between them they might make Mother Felicitas see reason and a doctor. The excuse for her sudden faintness was but the unselfish desire to spare others pain. “Not so young as I was,” she had said, and Sister De Sales, stout and forty-five, knew that she was the elder of the two by a year or more.

Yet behind that closed door it was an old, old woman who dragged herself to it and shot the bolt. It had taken all her self-control not to scream at Sister De Sales to be silent with her foolish talk about a doctor. She would have no doctor to speak learnedly to the next in rank of an overworked body and a troubled mind.

“I won’t have any doctor,” she said to herself, as she sank on her hard chair again. “I’m not dying—not yet! I can’t die,” she whispered with a shudder. “I should see them all standing round my coffin, I should hear their astonishment. Sister De Sales, who thinks I am a saint; Father Maurice, the new chaplain, almost crying because I had withheld my sins from him in the confessional.” Her face grew strong again as she thought where they would bury her—in unconsecrated ground.

She was a clever woman; she knew even in her wretchedness now that of all the convent not one nun had a personal ambition but herself. She had felt the gentle piety round her stifling often enough, though she had managed never to show it. There had been reasons for her to leave the world, but even here in seclusion she had worked and strained for the power she had reached—worked half for safety, that there might be no one over her, half to find peace for her miserable mind.

Well, she had had her way! She ruled the convent as no one before her had ever done. The community had never been so rich, so respected; the nuns, if they did not love her, held her in awe for her saintly austerity, her ceaseless industry—and here was what it had all come to. Every one of those good and gentle women, who were saints, indeed, would shrink from the holy mother raised above them if her secret history were revealed. Alive, she would be excommunicated; dead, she writhed in her chair as she thought of the hushed astonishment, the shocked amazement of the little world she ruled.

“No, no, no!” she said to herself. “As I have lived I will die and be buried; no one shall ever know. But I can’t die yet.”

She stretched out her hand for the wine she had refused, and drank it eagerly. No woman in the world had lived a harder, more self-denying life than she. Was it all to count for nothing now, just for the want of a little resource, a little more courage?

“No one shall know,” she said again, as the wine brought some warmth to her slow blood. As she lifted her eyes they caught the inscription of a picture on the wall.

“‘Death and the Judgment.’” The words struck her like an actual blow, but she never lowered her startled eyes.

What she had done she had done. She was willing to bear the brunt of it, but not the shame of humiliation before the nuns, who revered her in their pure and gentle hearts.

“‘Death and the Judgment,’” she thought, but she dared not say it aloud, when, for all she knew, Death might be at her very elbow, and for the Judgment she was unprepared.

Yet no idea of a tardy repentance, a confession at the eleventh hour, entered her fevered mind, as she drew that terrible letter out of the folds of her habit. She had fought her own battles; she would fight them once more, and then die, if she must, in the odor of sanctity. She thrust away the thought that this strange horror at her heart was the beginning of repentance. Almost she felt her own strong self again, as she deliberately opened and reread the letter that had shaken her nerve till she cried out.

Yet it was only a civil, well-meaning letter from one woman to another.

“Mrs. Fuller presents her compliments to the superioress of St. Mary’s Convent, and begs to inform her that she knows nothing of the missing pupil of that institution who was supposed to be traveling on the Continent in her care. Mrs. Fuller was both surprised and horrified to find that unscrupulous persons had made use of her name to deceive the matron and guardians of St. Anne’s Workhouse. The unknown woman who carried off the girl under Mrs. Fuller’s name must have been fully cognizant of her movements, as she had certainly spent the winter abroad with an invalid niece. Mrs. Fuller begged to assure the superioress of her deep sympathy in her anxiety for the young girl who was lost, and also to inform her that she had set a detective to work to trace out the wretches who have made so wicked and cruel a use of her name. As yet no clue had been found to their identity.”

A second note was enclosed in another hand, and it was this that had brought the reverend mother low, though it was but a rather disconcerted epistle from a well-known detective to his employer, regretting that so far he had discovered nothing.

“I may mention as a curious coincidence,” ran that paragraph that had wrung a cry from the wretched woman, “that if the missing girl’s name is really Beryl Corselas, her discovery is a matter of importance, as it may throw light on an unexplained case of murder and abduction which puzzled the whole force years ago, and, incidentally, may deprive a certain noble family of their estates. But that, of course, is between you and me.”

It struck Mother Felicitas that the detective’s letter was not especially businesslike; but it would have put fresh terror in her soul had she known why. The man was under a deep obligation to Mrs. Fuller, had thorough trust—this time misplaced—in her discretion, and was ready to turn the world upside down to find out the person who had dared to take such liberties with her name. But as it was, Mother Felicitas had read enough. She thought of that note written to the guardians in which she had said that it was on her authority Mrs. Fuller had taken the girl from the workhouse.

“I can explain that if I am obliged to,” she thought heavily. “My lawyer will bear me out that I sent him to make inquiries,” but her brain went swiftly as she wondered if the workhouse authorities had that letter—or Erceldonne.

If he had it, her foolhardiness alone had put it in his hands.

“He would not dare to use it,” she thought, and wiped her upper lip, that was wet. “It must be he who has the girl; no one else would be bold enough. And if he has her, he would not keep her. The money that I meant——” The pain struck her heart again, and more dizzily than ever she caught at the table for support. When it passed she could no longer force herself to think.

Dim visions passed before her eyes of a boy she had loved; of another, a half-grown lad, whom she had not known existed till he was brought home from Eton and coolly introduced to her as Erceldonne’s eldest son; of a baby girl she had loathed because she was what a fair-haired boy could never be; of a thing she had done to make a man stand in terror of her, and for hatred of a woman who had never wronged her. It had been in that man’s interest to keep Mother Felicitas quiet—if he knew her secret—all of it!—or not.

If he knew!

She groaned aloud. He must have found out something or he would never have burdened himself with a homeless girl, long ago thought dead and gone. He must know about the money, and meant it and the girl to go to his son with the hard, brown eyes, for whose sake another lad had been turned out on the world to sink or swim as he liked.

Hand in hand, the miserable woman seemed to see that brown-eyed boy and that baby girl, though the years had long since made them man and woman. If they stood so, indeed, Erceldonne could defy her, could afford to stand aside in silence and let her old sins come to light.

Looking back, Mother Felicitas could see with what a devilish cleverness he had always stood aside, trusting to chance and the hour to do what he dared not put his hand to. Only once had she known him to show any trace of human feeling—when he took that fair-haired boy, who had no other real name but Guy, from the third-rate school, where he was a half-starved teacher, and gave him five hundred pounds to start for himself in sugar-planting in Jamaica. She knew that was true, for she had seen the boy’s grateful letters to the man he only knew as a distant friend of his father. It had been sent to her, she knew very well by whom, as the easiest way of telling a professed nun. It began: “My dear Mr. Egerton,” but Mother Felicitas knew that Lord Erceldonne’s conscience would not require him to tell the truth when he did a kindness. That memory had softened her heart a little to the man she hated; it was as well for him that she did not know the bloody fragments of that uncashed check had lain on a sunny hillside till they blew away, instead of being cashed at Lord Erceldonne’s bankers.

“I can’t remember that; it wouldn’t save me,” she thought restlessly. “I must think of myself.”

While there was life in her she would make one struggle more; once more, perhaps, feel the joy of power stir in her and bring a hard man to terms.

Some one knocked at the door. To the reverend mother it sounded like the hand of fate that will not be denied. It seemed to her racked nerves that it must be Erceldonne himself who stood outside, ready to cry her shame aloud. It took all her strength to open the bolted door, and as it swung back the two nuns who waited there stood petrified.

The reverend mother towered over them, clutching the door-handle and glaring at them with the eyes of a wild beast. At the sight of their startled faces she broke into a loud, hysterical laugh that nearly made Sister De Sales, the timid, turn and run.

Holding the door-handle, the superior laughed and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.

“I’m better—quite well!” she cried, that strange laughter ending as abruptly as it began. “But Sister De Sales is right. I’m not myself. Next week I will go to the retreat at the convent in Blackpool for a change.”

The waters of terror were up to her very chin, but she would wade through them as she had always done, and get back to firm ground.

CHAPTER XXXI.

HOPELESS AND HELPLESS.

“Oh, Salome, he’s—we’re too late!” Andria, a ghostly figure enough in her torn white dressing-gown, in which she had lain down to take the sleep which had betrayed her trust, and with smears of dried blood on her face, leaned backward where she knelt. “They’ve killed him.”

“It ain’t de first,” answered Salome grimly, for all her panic of the slinking beasts that stood round their queer master. She dropped heavily down beside Heriot, and would have lifted the torn blanket that covered him, but a quiet word stopped her hand.

“Wait!” cried the old man. “It is not good that they smell the blood.” He waved his open hand with a queer circular motion, and the great cats turned and seemed to pour into the narrow passage in a living stream of yellow-white fur.

“I have told them to hunt for themselves,” he said slowly. “They will not come back till dawn.”

“Praise de Lawd for dat!” grunted Salome devoutly. She could put all her mind on the dead man now, and she swept off the blanket that covered him only to recoil in her turn, for so blood-soaked were his clothes that she could not tell where he had been wounded. His face was colorless and quiet over the crimson clothes that had been white; the woman touched him, peered into his face, and cried out:

“He ain’t dead, nor he ain’t dying,” she asserted. She undid his bloody shirt. “De ball must o’ glanced up on de bone. His ribs is broke from some reason—I dunno what, unless dey flung him down here!” She turned sharply to the old man who stood silently by.

“Where you find him?” she asked in the bad Spanish that had been her mother tongue years ago.

“She sent me out to get him, and I looked and looked. I came back and struck a track, wide like that,” measuring with his misshapen hands, “and blood on the bushes. At the top of the gully it stopped, and another track began, as if men had run—but light—with empty hands. And my cats whined and jumped down here. So I found him,” he answered simply. “It was not deep where he fell like it is here.”

Andria looked at the high cliff over her head and thanked Heaven the man who did this thing had been in the hurry that comes of mortal fear.

“You moved him here! How?” she cried, and Salome repeated her question.

He took a stone and rolled it over and over. But it was lucky for Andria she understood only the pantomime, not the words that went with it.

“I put him in the shade. Dead things bring flies in the sun, and I wanted him for my cats if she said I could have him. I went back to the house and called and called to ask her, but she never came.”

“Shut your head!” said Salome furiously, but also, with prudence, in English. “We got to take him home,” she went on; “he may die there or he mayn’t, but we must carry him. No, you ain’t fit; you’d stumble. I’ll take de head, and dat ole feller can carry de feet. We’ll lift him in de blanket.”

The old man nodded willingly enough when she explained, and Andria saw that it was even with alacrity that he lifted his end of the burden. She had reason to know his strength, yet she marveled at it in so miserable a body.

Salome’s stout arms were tense, and her breath came hard as she moved steadily along; but the wizened man seemed to feel neither weight nor fatigue.

Slowly and carefully the wretched procession reached the great white house that stood open in the desolate, red light of the sinking sun. Salome had seen wounds before, and it was as coolly as a hospital nurse that she did her poor best with this one. When she had done all she could she drew back and looked at Heriot lying on the wide, drawing-room sofa that must do duty for a bed, since it was impossible to carry him up-stairs.

“Now you can give him de brandy—just a little taste,” she said. “It wasn’t no good to bring him to just to wrestle wid me and jar dem bones.”

But even the brandy did not rouse him, since there was hardly any blood left in him. His eyelids flickered, and he swallowed; that was all. Yet Salome regarded him with a satisfied nod. He had begun to breathe better already. She waddled off to her kitchen to get something to eat, and sang hymns while she cooked, talking to herself with ludicrous effect between the verses.

“Glory, glory in de shining sky!” she sang, and broke off between tears and laughter. “He meant to leave dem two fur de jaguars to eat alive, and he meant to put me in de sea, for I see it in his face. And he’s dead and gone and et himself! I’m free! I’m free!” and in the midst of her ecstasy she stopped short at the thought of the girl who was taken.

“Pray. Miss Ber’l, pray!” she cried loudly, as if the girl could hear her. “Pray for de grave, for we can’t help you.”

Outside in the darkness of the drawing-room, Andria lay in a low chair, too exhausted to think, and felt a sudden, humble touch on her arm. The old man fell on his knees beside her and began to pour out a torrent of whispered Spanish. Half of it she knew to be questions, but she could not answer them, and, dazed, she shook her head.

With a hoarse cry of hopeless disappointment, the poor wretch leaped to his feet, and before she could call to Salome, was gone through the open door.

Andria sat up and put her hands to her aching head. It might be months before Heriot was himself again, and by that time what could they do?

There was a wounded man, herself, a black servant, and a madman to cope with Raimond Erle, who was already out of reach. With such poor allies and no money, how could she hope to reach England in time—or ever? With a gesture of sheer despair, she sank back again and closed her eyes. The very thing that would keep Raimond and Beryl apart she had never told the girl. She cursed her cowardice that could not speak out, that had solved itself by that photograph in a sealed envelope. She knew she had never opened it by the very way she had been bewildered, and looked from one to the other. It was useless now; she would not even look for the thing, that must be lying in Beryl’s room somewhere. She never wanted to see it again. It was too tangible a reminder of her trust that she had not kept from cowardly reluctance to speak her own shame.

In the dark, hushed room there sounded the faint breathing of the wounded man and a low sobbing that came from the very depths of a woman’s broken, desolate heart.

CHAPTER XXXII.

AN OLD PHOTOGRAPH.

“It’s no use,” thought Beryl Corselas, “nothing was ever any use. They’ve got us, body and soul, again.”

She stared at the sea through the open port-hole, as if it would help her to think.

How long had she lain in this hot, close cabin, hearing the endless jar of the screw and the wash of stormy water on the closed port-hole? And where was Andria?

“She opened the shutters and pulled me away, and he called her things. Oh, I can’t remember! But I’m on the yacht again. She must be here, too, for unless I dreamed it, I saw Amelia Jane in the cabin. I must get up and find her. Surely, surely they would never leave her behind!”

She sat up, and did not even notice how steady the ship was, though it was only that which had revived her. Between a slight concussion of the brain and being the very worst sailor possible, things had reason to be hazy to her. But as she looked about for her shoes and stockings the door opened softly and Amelia Jane’s face peered in.

“Amelia!” cried Beryl. “Then I wasn’t dreaming. You were here! Where’s Miss Holbeach? Tell her I want her.”

The woman’s face changed convulsively.

“You knows,” she said rudely; “what’s the good of askin’ me?”

“Answer me! Come in and shut the door.”

But it was only the long habit of servitude, and perhaps something in the yellow eyes, that made the woman obey her.

“Tell me what you mean. Quick!”

Amelia Jane shrank against the door.

“You knows dat poor, sweet lady won’t come to you no more,” she said, more civilly.

“They left her!” cried Beryl. She cared nothing for the servant’s changed manner. “Amelia, they didn’t leave her behind?” She flung out her hands as if to beg the woman to contradict her.

But Amelia Jane only nodded dumbly. Great tears began to pour down her cheeks.

“It was dem beasts you called in,” she said. “But dere’s no more trouble in dis world for Miss Holbeach. She’s gone clean away from trouble. De golden chariot’s swung low to fetch her.”

“Do you mean she’s dead?” Beryl’s eyes were dry, her tones perfectly even, but Amelia Jane made haste to nod.

“Who killed her?” Beryl said, with a dreadful matter-of-factness, her voice very low and steady. But Amelia Jane saw nothing strange in the question.

“Dem beasts,” she sobbed. “Dem beasts Salome said was haunts. Dey got her and poor old Salome. Dey chased master to de edge of de sea; he save you first, but he ain’t save de others. Chloe and you and me’s here—but——” she dropped her dark hands with a gesture of despair.

The girl sprang toward her, a dreadful, tragic figure, in her white nightgown, her wild, dusky hair streaming.

“Mr. Heriot——” she said, between her teeth, and, weak as she was, grasped Amelia Jane’s shoulder and shook her like a reed; “where was Mr. Heriot?”

“Gone, too; dey all gone.” Amelia was curiously, cringingly civil now. “He never got far dat night he went away, for dey found him on de hillside. Dat was how come dey feared de place and started to take us away.”

Beryl Corselas caught her breath hard, so that the woman waited for the sharp cry, the torrent of tears, that yet she did not expect. And when no cry came she trembled.

“Dress me,” came the sharp order. “Tell Mr. Egerton I want to see him,” and something in her eyes made Amelia Jane hurry as she had never hurried before.

“You can’t see him here,” she ventured timidly, looking at the disordered cabin. “Better come on deck; we’s nearly to de land.”

“Bring him here!” and Amelia Jane fled for her life at the sudden, dangerous ring in the voice.

But it was not Egerton who presently knocked at the door.

“Come in,” said Beryl evenly, and did not start as she saw Raimond Erle—only looked him up and down with strange eyes.

For a moment he could not think what to say to her. There was something terrible in her face, something like a beast waiting to spring in the tense lines of her body as she stood opposite him.

He stepped across the threshold in silence, and he did not close the door behind him, but she seemed not to notice.

“Where is Andria?” she said. “Where is Mr. Heriot? How is it that you and your father and I are alive when they are dead?”

Then Amelia Jane had told her, as she was meant to do! It is easier to amplify bad news than to break it. He would strike at the hardest part first.

“So you knew he was there!” he said, with a shudder that was not all put on. “Beryl, don’t look at me like that,” using her name as if he had used it many times to himself. “I know what you think—that only a selfish coward could have got away from that island and left a woman to be killed. But don’t judge me yet.”

“Answer me!” she said fiercely. “What happened to Andria? You were with her last!”

He nodded, but there was no shame on his face. “I was with her last,” he said slowly, “but—Heriot was with her first.”

“What do you mean?” She drew a step nearer to him; another, and she would fly at his eyes.

“Listen; be patient. I don’t know how to tell you, but if you will have it——”

“Go on.”

He saw the wild blood in her cheeks.

“It was this,” he answered very low. “That man Heriot had been in love with her for a long time—may have been married to her for all I know. Anyhow, he followed her. I suppose she sent for him. I don’t know.”

“How could she send, when we were told the place was Bermuda?” Beryl asked scornfully.

“You were told that for your own safety. There were others besides Heriot who might have followed you,” he answered somberly. “Oh, I’m not defending my father! He made mistakes, but he meant well.” He dared not lift his eyes to the fierce-light gaze of hers, but he kept on steadily: “The man knew she was there; it doesn’t matter how. He hid in our house and crept away in the night rather than face us.”

The girl deliberately turned her back to him. He had his eyes on the ground—anywhere but on her—and did not see her pull a flat thing out of her pocket, nor notice the rustle of the thin, foreign envelope that covered the carte de visite.

“Look at that if you would doubt me!” Andria had said. She would look at it now.

But when she saw and read she was struck dumb. No wonder Andria had feared to meet him. No wonder she had been livid with fury when he saw her. No wonder——

She wheeled and faced him, the photograph hidden in the folds of her wide silk belt.

“I——” but she stopped the words on her very lips. Let him tell all his lies, let him think her a fool! No one could know better than he that Heriot was not Andria’s lover.

“Perhaps he knew you,” she said, with an insolence for which he could have struck her, though he did not know all she meant.

“Yes, he knew me. Knew me,” he answered slowly, “enough to know I would not have my father’s roof—or you—dishonored. But his fear drove him to his death, and hers, too.

“When my father came to us that morning on the veranda, it was to say he had found a man dead, torn to pieces, not ten yards from the house. And that, if such things could happen, it was no place for two women. But you were too excited to listen. You were terrified that you might be taken away from a woman who had no right even to speak to you. You fell backward down the steps before you could be told of the danger, or the strange man who had been killed by the jaguars.”

“How do you know they were jaguars?”

Not a cry had been wrung from her, though her soul was sick to think how the madman and the cats had betrayed her. How Heriot—she dared not think or she would break down in her icy calm.

“We had excellent reason. You fell—my father told that woman her lover was dead, and she must come with us and you. She laughed. She said she would die with him sooner than live with us. She—I took you and ran with you to the boat. My father called the colored servants and went back for the stubborn woman up-stairs. But she tore away from him and ran—ran straight to her death. He saw her torn to pieces before his eyes, as he saw Salome afterward.

“The other two women had gone on. They will tell you how they sat in the boat and saw him but just escape with his life. How they heard Salome scream.” His face was white and damp as he finished, for what he knew was a thousand times worse than the lying tale he told.

Beryl looked at him, and the scornful, accusing words died on her lips. What did a lie more or less matter when Andria and Heriot were dead?

“Beryl,” said Erle softly, “try not to distrust me! My father and I are the only friends you have. You cannot think either he or I would willingly let such things be. Your—the governess”—he watched her face now for answering knowledge, for defiance that was not there—“was nothing to us but a misguided woman. We would have no motive——”

“What do you mean to do with me?” she said, as if he had not spoken.

“Take you with us; make your life happy, till you forget the horrible things you have known. Hate me,” he exclaimed with sudden passion, casting the memory of his crimes behind him, “if you like, but let me help you—keep you—love you——”

Her voice rang in the little cabin.

“You killed her!” she said, and pointed at him. “You!”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A DREAM OF VENGEANCE.

“I never touched a hair of her head,” said the man who had merely tied her up to suffocate or be eaten. “Beryl believe me! I knew her long ago, when first she was Heriot’s—friend.”

“I don’t believe you.” She was clasping and unclasping her hands. “Oh,”—she drew her breath and faced him like the little devil he had once called her—“not one word you say is the truth. My cats never touched her. I—they——” but she could not go on.

He had made one mistake—one glaring blunder—that made everything seem the lie. It was when he had linked Heriot’s name with Andria’s to a girl who had his own damnation in her pocket.

“I will never believe you—never! You may kill me, too, if you like,” she added, with a slow malice that made him hasten to clinch his lie.

“It’s true. The black woman told you what she saw. If I don’t tell you all I saw, it’s because I want to spare you.”

But she was not listening. The tireless jar of the engines had stopped; the yacht was lying quiet on a quiet sea.

“We’re at home in England,” said Erle coolly. “What will you do?”

“Accuse you—give you up,” she thought, and said nothing. To be silent was the only chance of doing it. She wished now that she had held her tongue, as she felt in her sash her only proof that he might have had a motive, since Andria was his discarded wife. She must play her game better than this. If he feared her he would never let her go. “Oh,” she said, with a pitiful shrinking from the awful task of avenging the dead, “tell me, swear to me that all you’ve said is true. Then I’ll go away with Amelia and Chloe and never trouble you any more.”

“Look!” said Erle, and pointed out the port-hole. There in a boat with their bundles were Chloe and Amelia Jane.

“You can’t; they won’t take you. All they want is to get safe on shore. Let them go, ungrateful beasts! Do you know they dared to say you had the evil eye?”

Amelia Jane’s queer manner and terror of her returned to Beryl’s memory, all of a piece with her hurry to be gone. He was telling the truth now, and her face grew white and vacant. The black woman had deserted her.

She was too stunned to imagine the truth, that they were being hurried off to join an outbound vessel for Jamaica; they knew too much to be let stay in England.

Erle was quick to see his advantage.

“Let them go,” he repeated, “I do not want any servants who say of you what you say of me—that it was through you death came.”

“Through me!”

“They said—oh, it’s ghastly nonsense! But they said it was you who could make those jaguars come and go as you pleased; that it was you who set them on. You see, I am not the only person who is thought—guilty!”

He did not say how, when Amelia Jane had owned to seeing Beryl play with jaguar cubs, it had been easy to put the rest of the wicked thought in her head, nor who had put it there. But the girl in dumb agony saw where she stood. She was utterly in his power. He might ask her where she meant to go, but it was all pretense. She would never get away from him and his father.

With a strange quiet she turned from him, but it was the silence of danger, not of despair.

“You see,” he said, with the soft voice women had loved, “other people might be as hard to you as you have been to me, mad as it sounds. Can I never make you understand we are your only real friends? If we turn against you——”

“Yes,” she said, “I hear you. Please go, Mr. Erle. I—I can’t talk any more.”

Was the man utterly callous that he did not care that his wife was killed, that he could lie about the dead? As the door closed behind him she stood rigid, in raging, biting desire for vengeance.

“I made a mistake when I taxed him with it,” she thought. “But I know it’s true, for I saw him wince. Oh, my Andria!” the tears coming at last to her burning eyes. “I should have stayed by her, held her tight, never let her go. She warned me what he was like. Why did I ever listen to him? And what am I, that he wants me—that he means to have me, even over a grave? Andria—Heriot——” She crushed her hands against her mouth that she might not cry out the names she loved.

“You died for me,” she whispered, anguish shaking her; “because I am what I am; they killed you to get me. That man was right. It was I who killed you. Oh, who am I, that they drag me with them? That they want me? I would give”—she stopped short, her strange eyes dilated—“I’ll give my life, Andria; I have no more!” she whispered.

Two hours afterward there came a knock at her cabin door. To Erle’s astonishment, she opened it quite readily and stood quietly before him. It had grown dark, and the electric light in the cabin dawned slowly and lit up her face that was white as chalk, but absolutely indifferent.

“Come,” he said, hiding his surprise, “we are going ashore. Let the stewardess pack your things.”

“I have none—not even a hat.”

“It’s dark and warm; it doesn’t matter. You shall have all you want as soon as you land.”

He could hardly take his eyes from the strange beauty of her face. Transcendental, unearthly, she stood in the pale electric light as one who sees a vision. The quick thought came to him that she meant to drown herself as they landed. But, though he kept at her elbow for fear, she never even glanced at the dark water round the ship.

Only as Erceldonne spoke to her did her strange calm flicker; hatred sprang into her eyes as she turned silently away.

In the boat, on the pier, at the station, Erle waited breathlessly for her to break away. But she stood like a statue, and never asked a question—moved when he led her without a sign of dissent. If Mother Felicitas had seen her face she would have been ready for some outburst, effective as it was unexpected. The two men merely thought the shock of what she had heard had cowed her.

All that night as she sat in a railway-carriage, one thought rang like bells in her head. The man at whose door two deaths lay should pay for them. And to do it she must go with him, find out who she was and why she was desirable. If she tried to run away they would catch her; if she went back to the convent she could find out no more than if she were in her grave. She sat with eyes shut till they thought her asleep, and planned and replanned her revenge; that she might not remember Brian Heriot and fall to crying for the face that she would see no more.

They changed carriages at dawn, where, she did not know, nor where they were taking her. She looked for hours at the flying country and could not tell, till, as the train stopped, great, black letters on a white sign-board caught her eye. “Blackpool,” she read in the veiled sunshine of the February morning, and remembered it was here she had first seen the haggard, listless-eyed man who had been her evil genius.

“We change here,” said Erle, rising and not noticing her as he leaned out of the carriage window to glance at the station, which was fuller than he liked. But he was reassured by the look of the crowd, who were excursionists. Neither he nor his father saw her glance at the lining of the hat they had bought for her when they landed. “Pearce, Plymouth,” was stamped on it. They had come all the way across England here; they must have a reason. Were they taking her back to the workhouse at St. Anne’s?

She got out as quietly as if she neither knew nor cared, but half-way across the station she gasped and stood still.

Opposite her, with her back to her, but unmistakable, was Mother Felicitas, Sister De Sales at her side!

They stood, as religious women do, with their eyes cast down; they had not seen her.

“Mother Felicitas!” she said, with a horrible fear, not for herself, but for the vengeance that would slip from her if the superior saw and claimed her. An instinct like an animal told her she would get no credence of her tale in the convent.

“Go on,” said Erceldonne in her ear furiously. “Go on!”

The girl faltered, almost fell, and at Erle’s wondering exclamation Mother Felicitas looked up. Her terror was before her eyes!

For one instant she stood speechless. Before she could move, Beryl Corselas had been hustled into a train that was already moving out of the station.

“The reverend mother has overtaxed her strength,” said Sister De Sales quickly to a porter. “Water, please, and I will get her to a cab.”

She was short-sighted, and had seen nothing. If she had, she would merely have marveled that the reverend mother should lean heavily against her in sudden faintness at the sight of a runaway schoolgirl.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A LITTLE GOLD.

“I couldn’t help it,” said Andria, “they were too quick for me. I am slow-witted. I see now it was madness to have sent you away, and worse to send that dreadful old man after you. He might have saved us.”

“How long have I been laid up?” Heriot, pretty white and bloodless, lay propped with pillows on the sofa; he was stiff, and his wound was painful, but his mind was clear. “How did I get her ring?” for the green beryl glowed on his finger.

“Not a week,” replied Andria wretchedly, for by now the yacht must have reached England. “I told you every two or three times, but it didn’t seem to reach you.”

“It all seemed a part of the pain, I thought—‘beryls bring bad dreams,’” he quoted. “I wish this was one.”

“The old man must have put the ring on your finger. Oh, if he would only go away and not sit outside and moan!”

“Why? What is it to him?”

Even then she could not tell him. She turned away. “Call the man,” said Heriot sharply.

Andria never looked up as the forlorn wretch shambled in and stared at Heriot with lack-luster eyes. What would he tell? or, rather, what would Salome make of it in her translation?

“She is gone,” he said slowly in Spanish. “This time it is forever.”

Andria started.

Heriot understood—was answering him in as good Spanish as his own. Salome stood goggle-eyed, straining every nerve to comprehend. Only to Andria was it an incomprehensible medley of sounds.

“What does he say, Salome? Tell me,” she ordered frantically; but Salome only waved her aside and groaned aloud. It seemed hours as the words she could not understand went on.

“It’s a lie, Mr. Heriot!” broke out Salome fiercely. “She ain’t look like him; she ain’t be like him——” But the words died on her tongue remembered how the girl had mastered the jaguar as it ravened at the bars.

So the secret was out!

“Salome, hush—wait!” cried Andria frantically. “Mr. Heriot, stop him; tell me what he says.”

“He wanders,” said Heriot; his bloodless face was ghastly. “He’s mad; he’s—my God, he says she’s his daughter!”

“Then it was true.” Andria covered her face. “I knew; Egerton told me—let it slip,” she whispered. “But it is her mother who must have been his child, not she.”

She thought of the strange moods of the girl, her miraculous power over animals, of the strain that must be hereditary in her young blood.

“This is the story,” said Heriot. His face was set. “Erceldonne and another man came here in a yacht. The second man never came up to the house, apparently; certainly never had anything to do with the girl.” (Oh, the pity of that first girl’s silence about the man who truly never came to the house, but who met her in secret, unknown!) “And Erceldonne came every day, and the girl would have nothing to say to him—hated him. One day the old man heard her scream—not once—many times. He ran down to the shore, and was just in time to see Erceldonne put her into a boat and shove off with her. He had no boat himself, and I think he must have had a fit there in the sun. For all he knows after that is that he lost all his money in Brazilian bonds; he couldn’t follow her. The servants apparently all left him; he used to sit all day on the shore with his jaguars—and one day Erceldonne came back.”

“Well?” said Andria breathlessly, for Heriot paused.

“He said he never took the girl; that she left the yacht that same night with the other man—all lies, of course. He landed with men and guns, shot the jaguars—though two of them got off into the woods without his knowledge—and, of all things—offered to buy the house from the miserable father; wanted him to take the money and go and look for the girl.”

“De ole man crazy,” Salome burst in, “but cunning—oh, cunning! He says yes, he sell de place. He creep away into de woods to find his jaguars dat was left, and he sit and sit again to watch. One day he catch master, sure!”

Heriot nodded.

“Erceldonne gave him money—something adequate—but the poor soul threw it in that pool. ‘Gold,’ he said, ‘a little gold to pay for much flesh and blood,’ so he threw it away. But he got no chance at Erceldonne, for he went off again the next day. God knows why he wanted the place!”

“He wanted the crazy man to go on the track of the girl and her lover,” Andria cried. “The other man must——”

“Beryl,” said Heriot slowly, “is in some way the living image of Lord Erceldonne. No! Don’t say it; let me finish,” for he knew what was on her tongue.

“There were years after that when no one came to the island. Then one day Erceldonne came back, opened the house and put in it Salome and a lad of twenty and went away. The jaguars tore the boy to bits.”

Salome threw up her arms.

“It’s true,” she cried. “It’s true! I set here and hear dem in de broad day. After dat he brung Chloe and Amelia Jane, and why, I never knew. He brung me because—oh, missus, I had a child! I killed it in Jamaica because it had de master’s eyes. He bring me here and leave me because—oh!” wildly, “I couldn’t help myself. I was young den, and he took me for to keep house. I was mad wid de shame, wid de eyes ob de white child.” She cowered at Andria’s feet as she stood aghast. Was there no end to this man’s crimes?

The next moment she put her hand on the black woman. Who was Andria Erle, to judge her?

“Poor Salome! Poor soul!” she whispered.

“He brung me,” sobbed the woman. “He didn’t care whether I live or die. He say dey hang me if ever I dare leave dis place.”

Heriot said something under his breath. Jamaica had been his first abode when he left England; he remembered a queer story he had heard there about a woman named Salome who wanted to murder her child because it was white. She and her lover had fled, leaving the dead child where it lay, and afterward——

“Listen, Salome,” he said quickly, “the child was asleep, had slept all day. You were frightened and shook it——”

“I shook de life out of it; it died,” she said, with a hoarse groan. “It died.”

“It didn’t die,” returned Heriot, with a queer laugh. “A woman found it and ran with it to the doctor. It had been put to sleep with morphia; it’s alive now! And so is the chemist that sold the morphia to a white man. Your master had excellent reason on his own account to retire from Jamaica!

“I saw your boy running round selling papers in Kingston, and some man told me his history. Your shaking couldn’t have killed a boy like that, Salome, even when he was a baby.”

She could only stare at him. Then she broke out into incoherent words—into dreadful laughter.

“My soul’s clean!” she screeched, “clean! I’m free; I’m free!” laughing still. She rushed out of the house and leaped and danced in the blazing sun.

“Let her be,” said Heriot softly. “The man was an iniquitous devil, but he’s paid for it.”

“But Beryl——” Andria’s lips were white. Had the story of Beryl’s mother put her out of Heriot’s heart?

“I can’t travel for another week,” said Heriot simply, and a shame came over her at the matter-of-fact words. “Then we’ll take her away from Erle somehow.”

“But—if he’s married her?”

“He can’t. Don’t you see, she must be Erceldonne’s daughter?”

“He can’t be—his son! That must be what they whispered,” she was whispering herself. “Don’t you see that solves the whole thing? Her money will set them on their feet—oh! the money must be a lie to get Raimond to marry her. She can’t have any money—and neither have we. How are we to get to England?”

“That’s the easiest part,” Heriot added something to the old man who stood looking from one to the other, with eyes that were frightened but sane enough.

He leaped to his feet at the word and ran out after Salome.

“It’s the succession,” Andria cried, harking back to her own thoughts. “Raimond will be all right if he marries her.”

Heriot moved gingerly on his pillows; his face was pale, but his eyes were shining.

“I’m going to marry her myself,” he said quietly. “I don’t care if the devil’s her grandfather.”

The old man came running in and poured a stream of wet, green coins on Heriot’s bed.

They were Erceldonne’s own sovereigns!

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE BEGINNING OF THE JUDGMENT.

Mother Felicitas grew strangely worse at Blackpool. She only stayed for a week in the quiet convent, and neither rested nor slept till she was back in her own place.

But if she had thought to find there a letter from the man she dreaded she was mistaken. Three weeks went by, and instead of being reassured by his silence she was more terrified as each day passed without a letter.

She had known him well enough at the station. Sixteen years and more had not changed a line in his face. If his son married the girl, her history would have to come out—if she were to be a profitable bride. And Erceldonne could tell it with such iniquitous cleverness that it would not be he who should be involved in crime or shame.

Mother Felicitas would have liked to send out messengers to ransack all England for Beryl Corselas—she had learned easily enough that they had not taken her to Erceldonne—since, with the girl in her hands, she could once more have dictated terms to the man who had been too clever for her. But she had no one to send; would not have dared if she had had the cleverest detective in England to let him try to get the girl and fail.

And if Erceldonne did not write, the real Mrs. Fuller did: She assured the reverend mother, with great gusto, that every effort was being made to find the missing girl.

“It is no business of a stranger’s—an outsider’s!” Mother Felicitas said, with stony calm that covered fury. “Why does this Fuller woman make it hers?”

But even while she asked the question of the bare walls of her own convent parlors she knew the answer.

Years ago there had been a hue and cry over the sudden death of a woman and the disappearance of her child. It was Mrs. Fuller’s friend the detective that was so hot upon the trail. To solve a mystery that thirteen years ago had been given up by the whole force would make his reputation.

The woman who said to herself that she never repented was perilously near to repentance now. The dread of shame and disgrace distorted her face where she sat alone.

“He means that son to marry her—for the Corselas millions that are crying for their owners, for the succession that can be assured in no other way. And the announcement of that marriage under her own name or her mother’s will spring the mine under me! And I can’t stir a finger. It’s a month since I saw them with her; it may be too late now. Every one in England but me may know the missing girl is found.”

She could not keep her hands still nor her mouth steady. Retribution was coming to her—punishment for those long years when her whole life had been a blasphemous lie. She had no hope that Erceldonne would hold his tongue when the announcement of his son’s marriage brought a stern order for an explanation from the law of the land; from chancery, too, that had the Corselas money in trust. There was one point where nothing but the truth would clear Erceldonne himself, and there was no hope that he would not tell it.

“If I could stop the marriage!” almost she said it aloud.

But she could think of no way that a dying woman in a convent could balk the will of Erceldonne.

A sharp clang of the old bell that was just outside the parlor door made her start. It was Tuesday—visiting-day. She drew herself together to clap her hands for a lay sister and say that Sister De Sales must see the anxious mothers of pupils—that she herself was too weary.

The portress was a new one and not used to her work. Before the reverend mother had more than lifted her shaking hands a knock came to her door—a stereotyped convent knock such as pupils gave—not a visitor’s.

“Come in!” cried Mother Felicitas, and straightened up in her chair.

She was nearly ruined, and her power would soon be a byword; but at least she could still crush a pupil who dared to come unsummoned to her private room.

But it was no girl with a grievance who opened the door. On the threshold there stood a tall and beautiful woman whose eyes were less gentle than her mouth, and whose red-brown hair——

“Andria Heathcote!” said Mother Felicitas, who never forgot a face.

“Yes,” said the visitor, and involuntarily curtsied, as she had never dared to enter that room without doing. Yet the next instant she had coolly turned and shut the door behind her.

Old pupils often came back to visit the convent; there was no reason for the return of this one to be more than ordinary, yet the Mother Superior seemed to lack strength to hold out her hand. Andria, after the first glance, could hardly look at her. She had been handsome once in a hard, ascetic way; now her face was but skin drawn over bone, and her sunken eyes like fires long burned out.

“You are surprised to see me, reverend mother?” she began gently. She had never liked Mother Felicitas, but that might have been her own fault, and the superior was her one hope now.

“I am not well. I see few visitors,” was the slow answer. “As you see, there have been many changes even here since your day.”

“Poor Mother Benedicta!” said Andria, and could not go on. She had no right to stand in this quiet convent parlor and play the hypocrite to a woman who might be hard and cold, but was, nevertheless, a saint in her way.

“Happy, happy Mother Benedicta,” her successor was thinking passionately. “Free among the dead!” But she only said slowly.

“Surprised? No; many girls come back. They think of us sometimes. I suppose you have married, Andria!” with perfunctory interest, wishing the inopportune visitor would go.

“Married!” said Andria, who once had thought she was Andria Erle. “No!”

The words were almost a cry, and for the first time the Mother Superior looked at her.

“Mother Felicitas,” she began, forcing herself to speak out under those unfriendly eyes. “I have no right to be here, no right to force myself on any one like you—but one. I am in great trouble. I have been a wicked woman, but—I am in great trouble.”

“And you want to come back!” came the answer slowly. Trouble was the only thing that ever brought them back—to stay!

“No,” said Andria, looking round her with a shudder; she would eat her heart out here. “No! Mother Felicitas, I told you I had been wicked—a fool——”

“They are the same,” said Mother Felicitas shortly.

“But I woke up from my dream. I tried to do faithfully the work that was put into my hands, and—I failed! I have no one to turn to; I am in despair, yet, perhaps, there is time to save my trust yet, if you will help me. No one else can.” She held her hands clasped tight before her, and spoke in a whisper. “Oh! reverend mother, who was Beryl Corselas?”

The quiet room heaved like a sea before her hearer’s eyes. The black letters under the picture she dreaded seemed to spring into life, to speak aloud:

“Death and the Judgment!”

Well, Death was coming, and here, against all canons, was the beginning of the Judgment before it! Yet the superior managed to answer:

“Is that your trouble?” she said. “It is a very old one, and I know no more about it than you.”

“Oh, Mother Felicitas, think! Try to remember,” with sudden gentleness that was more dangerous than the other woman’s passion. “You knew once. Long, long ago you told Beryl her mad temper came to her honestly—that her mother was the same.”

“I!” The superior was, for an instant, staggered. “If I did I was much to blame,” she went on lamely enough. “We thought at one time we had a clue to her parentage, but it proved a wrong one. When she ran away from us we knew it.”

“Mother, listen!” said Andria, more gently still. “You don’t know what hangs on it. Even now that poor child may be trapped into a marriage she hates—may be——”

“You know where she is?”

“If I did I would not come to you.” That quick cry had made her old distrust wake armed. “But I know who has her. When you know, you may perhaps remember—something—that may help me to find her.

“I have been a governess since December, and Beryl Corselas was my pupil.”

Mother Felicitas leaned back and gripped the table in the old way. She could not speak.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

“A BOY!”

“Last autumn,” Andria looked straight at the rigid figure in the chair, “I was in London, deserted, nearly starving. A man who called himself Egerton engaged me, without a character, to travel with his ward. And the ward was Beryl.

“He said we were to go to Bermuda, but he took us to a place the merest child would have known was not that. A lonely island with one house, in miles of scrub”—there was no change on the superior’s face; could she have heard of that island before?—“a house that was locked every night like a fortress for fear of a crazy man and of wild beasts that hunted to the very door. He left us there to die, with no one but three black women to protect us. To die, reverend mother, as a boy died whom he took there five years before.”

Death—Death and the Judgment! Mother Felicitas’ face bore no longer the look of a human countenance.

“Five years,” she said. “A boy?”

“He seemed a boy, Salome said, because he was so young in his ways, had such merry gray eyes and was so gay; but he was twenty. And the jaguars tore him to bits, as they were meant to tear us.”

“No, no, no!” and if there can be such a thing as a whispered shriek it came from the tortured lips of the Mother Superior.

“I frighten you? It’s too horrible to hear? It was more horrible——”

“The boy!” Mother Felicitas clutched Andria’s arm as she had been clutching the table. “The—the poor boy! You said he was called——”

She had said nothing, but she did not remember.

“Guy, Salome called him, but I never heard his other name.”

“Guy.” All hell had opened under Mother Felicitas, but not the hell she had feared. Pain a thousand times worse than the disgrace she had dreaded made her groan aloud, and then a very recklessness of fury shook her, as it might a mother whose only son has been murdered.

“Go on,” she said, and drew her breath through her teeth. “Er-Egerton took him there—and he died.”

“He was killed! Then we came and Beryl could master the jaguars, could master the madman afterward; they never touched us. But we were left for worse than jaguars. Egerton came back, and his son, Raimond Erle. Egerton—I say—but I mean Lord Erceldonne—and they plotted to take Beryl away and marry her to Erle for her money and something else. Think, Mother Felicitas! Can’t you remember anything? Who was the girl that they wanted a waif like her?”

“I—I never knew!” and then in her terror strength came back to her. “I tell you,” she cried fiercely, “I know nothing. How could I know, who have been dead to the world these thirteen years?”

“The year Beryl Corselas was brought here.”

It was said musingly, and yet it carried meaning.

The reverend mother could grow no paler, but her eyes were like living coals now instead of dead ones.

“Is that all?” she said. For the moment Beryl Corselas was nothing to her. She could only think of the boy who had been taken to the uttermost parts of the earth to be got rid of, from mere wanton weariness of his face.

“No, they took—at least Raimond Erle took—Beryl away and left me tied up with cords, towels, anything, that I might die like the boy. Lord Erceldonne—oh!” she cried, “Mother Felicitas, Lord Erceldonne is dead. The jaguars killed him as he meant them to kill us, before something made him change his plans and want Beryl to go with him and marry his son.”

“Dead! When? Speak, Andria.” But if for an instant a fierce hope glowed in her, the next it died.

“Five weeks ago, on the island.”

The Mother Superior dragged herself to her feet.

“Go!” she said, and her voice was strong and resonant. “Go. You said well that you were a wicked woman, when you dare to come here with lies.”

It was a trap. By a very hair she had escaped it. Erceldonne himself must have sent this woman here.

But Andria never stirred. She had been right about what the superior knew—for Mother Felicitas was afraid!

“I’ve not finished,” she said as she looked straight into those awful eyes that seemed to see things that had shriveled them to look on. “That madman said Erceldonne had taken away his daughter years ago, that Beryl was this same daughter come back again. He said——”

“What is it to me?” cried Mother Felicitas. “I know none of them. Why do you come to me?”

For a moment a spirit as harsh as her own looked out of Andria Heathcote’s eyes.

“You do know,” she retorted, “and you will know more unless you help me to stop this marriage and save Beryl Corselas. Do you think if Erceldonne had sent me I should have let out that story about the boy who was killed on the island that you—know of? And he could not send me, for he’s dead!”

She turned to go, but a hand colder than death fell on hers.

“Wait,” said Mother Felicitas, “wait!”

She tottered to her chair, and signed to Andria Heathcote to lock the door.

She was speaking the truth according to her lights, and the reverend mother knew it.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE DARK HOUSE.

That Beryl Corselas was not at Erceldonne Mother Felicitas knew. But that he owned a disused, rat-haunted house in Westmoreland even the superior had almost forgotten.

And it had been a very simple business to double on their own track at Blackpool and get off at a desolate little station in Westmoreland.

It was pouring rain. Beryl, hurried into a close carriage, had not time to see the whilom convent “boy of all work” was the driver. They drove on endlessly it seemed to the girl. Through the rain she could see nothing but endless, rolling moors. When at last they stopped it was pitch-dark. Dazed and weary Beryl got out and for the first time trembled.

A dark house, without a lighted window, stood before them. Erceldonne was unlocking the door with a key from his pocket, and as he swung back the door a close, cold air of emptiness and desolation came out on the girl. What were they going to do with her? How could she avenge Andria here?

She fought down the cowardly thought that at least she would have been safe in the convent, and followed Erle into the dark hall. The cold air of it breathed like death and the grave.

He struck a match and opened the first door he came to.

“Why is it like this?” he said to his father angrily. “Do you want us to die of cold and discomfort? Where is the woman?” But before there was time for an answer a door opened, and against a blaze of light that made her blink Beryl saw the woman who had taken her from the workhouse.

“Mrs. Fuller!” she cried.

“Yes,” returned the woman slowly, “Mrs. Fuller.”

She was not given to pity, but for one weak instant compassion rose in her. The next she swept it away. There was no need to pity the girl. Erle meant to marry her. She drew back as Beryl ran to her.

“Your dinner is ready,” she said to Erceldonne. “Such as it is.”

Tone and manner were so changed from the Mrs. Fuller she had known that Beryl stood astounded. Then it came to her with an awful sinking of her heart that this woman was in the plot against her, was a part of the mystery she loathed and feared. There would be no help from her.

She looked around the room into which Erle led her gently. There was a huge fire, a mean lamp, a table with meat, bread, and wine. Everything else was bare and desolate. She was suddenly conscious that this was her prison, where she might live and die unless she did what they told her. All her fine dreams had come to this. For she knew by the tinned food on the table that the pale woman with golden hair had put it there, and that there was not another soul in the house.

She sat down and could not eat—only looked up with a start to see Erle and Mrs. Fuller finish and leave the room. She was alone with the man who called himself Egerton.

“Listen,” he said coldly, stretching his feet out and lighting a cigarette. “My son tells me you say he killed your governess and the man you and she saw fit to hide in my house. You had better disabuse your mind of that; and to help you I will tell you who you are—the granddaughter of that crazy old man on the island. You may break away from here and tell all you imagine, and if you do I will prove you as mad as he.”

He waited for an answer, but she only cowered as if he had struck her. Somehow it was no surprise. All her life she had been told there was something about her that was inhuman, horrible. She knew what it was now—remembered with horror how she had soothed the madman’s cats with a song she must have inherited the trick of.

“You see,” he said, “you can do nothing. Your friends, as you chose to think them, are dead.”

“I can go back to the convent,” she muttered, for at least she could hide her head there.

“You can go nowhere,” he answered coldly. “We did our best to take care of you, and you repay us with ingratitude. If I were wise I would put you in an asylum at once before you had a chance to spread your crazy imaginings. But I will give you a chance. See,” he went on slowly, “if with solitude and quiet you will perhaps come to your right mind. My son——”

“Why did you say he was your nephew?”

This man could only kill her, and at least she would strike back at him first.

“Did I?” he returned coolly. “If you think, you will find it was Salome who told you that.”

The memory of that morning flashed back on her. It had not been Salome who introduced “My nephew, Mr. Erle.”

“You see,” he pursued, with a shrug, “you cannot remember anything correctly.”

“I remember this much,” and a tide of fury swept over her, taking all her terror away. She sprang up and faced him, with the resemblance to him more marked than ever. “You knew that island wasn’t safe, but something made you change your mind about letting me die there. The evening you went back to the yacht because you were afraid to stay after what happened to Andria, she followed you. She heard every word you said to your nephew where you stood behind the cypress thicket—and Heriot heard, too. You have done nothing but lie to me. Even your name isn’t true!”

She shook with passion where she stood over him and for once he lost his self-control.

“This knowledge didn’t last long,” he said brutally, for he was not afraid of the dead, “nor will yours, if you make me angry. Your governess was a treacherous, infamous woman, who made use of my house to send for her lover.”

“She never sent. He was wrecked there,” she could hardly speak for rage. “Oh, you did well to kill him! In another day he would have saved us both.”

Erceldonne’s face was livid.

“I have had enough heroics,” he said. “No one has murdered any one, as you are crazy enough to think, and if you were in your right mind no one would be kinder to you than I. As it is, all I mean to do with you is to keep you here till you come back to your senses. You’ll never get away while you rave like this. I told you who your mother was—that lunatic’s daughter, but I did not tell you who your father was. You little fool, I am your only relation, your only legal guardian!”

“No, no!” she cried, and covered her eyes with her hands that at least she might not see his face when he said he was her father. Yet if he did it would make Erle her brother, unless he were really his nephew!

“You’re quite wrong,” said Erceldonne, with his jarring laugh, as he saw that at last he had made her flinch. “It was not I who had the doubtful felicity of being your parent.”

“Then I am——” she faltered; she did not believe his denial of her. What could she be, who had madness and wickedness for father and mother?

“You’re no one,” he answered shortly, “while you cling to your crazy delusions. If you give them up you’ll get away from me and be Raimond’s wife. But he doesn’t want a crazy one, and you can think that over at your leisure.”

An older woman would have realized that whoever she was, she must be worth having for them to care nothing for her strain of lunacy; or else that there was a lie somewhere. Beryl was ignorant of the world.

The old vacancy came into her eyes as she stared at the dying coals on the hearth. This house was her prison; she would never get away from it except as the wife of a man who, instinct told her, was a murderer. And she had let them take her past Mother Felicitas, trusting in her own strength to bring home crime to men like these.

In all the world there was no one to help her; those two she had loved were dead. This was a house the world thought empty. No one would come here, or hear her if she screamed her life out. She did not even know where it stood.

She looked up to see Erceldonne was gone, and Mrs. Fuller standing by her.

“You had better go to bed,” the woman said, not unkindly. “You are to sleep with me.”

But the girl never answered.

Oh! why had she not died with Andria?

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

DREAMS.

As if she were blind and dumb Beryl Corselas followed Mrs. Fuller up-stairs to a bedroom as bare as the rest of the house.

The woman would have talked to her, but she shrank away, conscious that she was a prisoner, and Mrs. Fuller one of her jailers. She saw another thing as time went on—that day and night changed places in this house. There were no blazing fires in the daylight, only smoldering coals that made no smoke that tell a tale of habitation. And the doors were never unlocked, nor was she ever alone to try them.

Mrs. Fuller and Erceldonne were with her turn about. Erle had vanished, and all count of time seemed to have vanished, too.

Day after day went by, and Beryl never opened her lips. Her sullen silence was as hopeless as her pale face, but both got on the nerves of her jailers. If Lord Erceldonne had dared, with what good-will he would have put an end to them!

Raimond had gone to London, and sent back a letter by the round-faced boy that made his father curse at each day passed with nothing done. Would he never come back? Was he out of his senses that he did not see there was no time to lose? Why was he “unexpectedly detained”?

As the third week crawled by Lord Erceldonne lost patience. Night after night he paced the gravel, listening for the wheels that never came. But when the fourth was gone, and the fifth, he dared not listen, for he imagined wheels in each gust of wind. And the wind blew eerily at nights over the moorland.

“The boy is mad!” he said to himself, aloud, alone in that lonely room down-stairs, when the two women were gone to bed.

Behind him some one laughed, or was it outside the open window?

Lord Erceldonne forgot patience. He stared round the empty room, flung open the thick wooden shutters on the gusty spring night, and called aloud:

“Raimond! Raimond! Why the devil don’t you come in?”

There was no answer. From far away he heard the sound of a moorland brook that his strained ears had surely turned into mocking laughter. Yet he drew sharply back from the window, and shut it with frenzied haste. It was no brook that had whispered in his very ear from the darkness under the window.

“Mad, mad!” like an echo.

“It’s the solitude, the cursed waiting.” He wiped his forehead. “It’s got on my nerves.”

For the whispers had been labored, un-English, as if some one repeated sound, not sense; the voice that of the madman on the island. Imagination was making a fool of him; the thing was impossible. Yet he dared not go to bed, and his thoughts even Mother Felicitas might not have envied.

The next afternoon, in broad day, he fairly gasped with astonishment, for his long-looked-for son drove up to the door. Lord Erceldonne, opening it, could hardly contain himself as he saw he was not alone. A quiet man, in black clerical clothes, sat in the carriage.

“Where have you been?” said Erceldonne in a whisper almost soundless, as his son got out, “Who are you bringing here? You’re mad—to dare!”

“Shut up,” returned Raimond, shaking hands as if he greeted him. “Open some windows in this musty hole; make everything look all right. This is the very man we want, and an old friend of mine,” raising his voice, “whom I’ve had hard work to find. Father Maurice,” turning quickly, “this is my father. And he is afraid you will find it rough work staying in a shooting-box like this.”

“I have seen worse places,” said the man.

As he stood on the door-step Erceldonne saw he was a clergyman of the Church of Rome. Might have seen also that here was a man impossible to coerce or deceive, a strange friend for Raimond Erle; but Lord Erceldonne was not the quick-eyed man he had been. Bad dreams had wrought on his nerves.

“Raimond’s friends are always welcome,” he said stiffly, “but we are indeed roughing it here,” and he cursed Raimond silently for having called the place a shooting-box when there was not a gun in the house.

And there were no servants! It was enough even to make “an old friend” suspicious.

“Why did you bring him?” he said, when the priest had been put in his own room for want of another habitable one. “And where have you been?”

“Finding out things.” And now that they were alone his face was haggard enough. “Do you know there is five hundred reward offered for her? Some detective’s at the bottom of it, but God knows who is offering the money!”

“And you stayed away all this time, knowing that?” cried Erceldonne, with uncurbed fury.

“I stayed because I could not help it. I had to get some one to trust, and I had to scour all England for this man,” little knowing by what chance he had found him ready to come.

“Who is he?”

“He had the honor,” said Erle cynically, “of marrying me to the first Mrs. Erle!”

Erceldonne cursed him up and down for a fool.

“Then why, of all things, do you want him here?” he ended.

“To marry me to the second. Oh, don’t waste your breath! I know what you’re going to say, but it will be legal enough this time. He had no right to do it before. I found out afterward that it was before he had entered the church. I can hold that over him if he kicks. But he won’t. He’s sorry for me, because my wife died so soon. He will tie this knot with true pleasure.”

“Do you think that sullen vixen up-stairs will have it tied without raving to him? For I don’t.”

Erle laughed.

“I think she will,” he said suavely. “You can’t manage women with sledge-hammers—unless they love you. That’s where you go wrong! Take the priest out of the way—anywhere—round the moors, and send Beryl here to me. But don’t warn her I’m here.”

Out of doors a mountain mist had fallen, and the damp twilight of it made him nervous as he waited. There would be no coercing her if the wet drove Father Maurice back before the work was done. He went to the window, and fancied he saw the black figures of his father and the priest dimly visible through the fog; and turned impatiently to go to this Vashti who would not come. But the door opened before he could reach it, and even in the twilight he started at Beryl Corselas’ eyes.

“You!” she said, full of amazement not only at his presence, but at the changed look of the room, whose windows were unshuttered as she had never seen them. But it had been a week and more since she had left her bedroom, and they might well have grown careless.

“Yes,” he said. “I—dear; what have they done to you while I was gone? Have they frightened you? You look so pale. I should never have left you. My father is hasty, unjust! But I’ll take care of you now.”

“I don’t want you to,” she said lifelessly. Her eyes were on the window that was open to the fresh air, and she went to it, like a prisoner who is strange to the light of day.

Erle took no notice; it was too high from the ground to be dangerous. He went to the fire, and threw on dry wood till the room was light as day. There was no sense in mystery or concealment now, since the thing must be done and published before a week at farthest. After that detectives could root out what they liked.

As he turned his back she leaned from the window, and her helplessness stung her afresh as she breathed the damp, sweet air. She was high above the ground, there was not even grass to break the fall if she dared to jump out. There was ivy, but not directly below the window; its trails swayed at the sides out of her reach. Swayed—she watched it with vague wonder. Why should it move in the stirless air? Why did the woody stems creak in the twilight at her right hand?

A log Erle laid on the fire slipped, and rolled blazing on the hearth. He kicked it back impatiently, with a noise that must have startled her in the silent room, for she gave a queer, stifled cry.

“Confound the thing!” he said irritably, for the log had slipped again. As he wrestled with it he did not notice her lean from the window perilously, and stare through the twilight at something that was not an ivy branch; something that moved, but not with the chill, evening air.

A lean hand she knew, a hand no one could mistake who had once seen it, was stretched out to her from the ivy where something clung like a hat. It pressed a scrap of paper into her outstretched fingers; a voice whispered in her very ear. But she had no time to hear the low words; Erle’s light, delicate step was coming toward her.

Clutching a scrap of paper, she drew back from the window just in time.

Erle was at her shoulder. And oh! was she mad as they said, to dream she had seen the lunatic she had left thousands of miles away? Her heart thumped till she was sure Erle must hear it. How could she get rid of him long enough to read that paper that seemed to sting in her hand?

“What’s the matter?” he said quickly. “Don’t shake like that; I’m not going to hurt you.”

He looked over her shoulder out the window, fearful the wet would drive back his father and the priest; and Beryl’s heart contracted. Had he seen—been nearer than she knew?

“I’m cold!” she said sharply, and walked away from him to the fire. If he had seen, that paper should burn before he got it! But he did not even follow her.

“What has my father done to you?” he said, his worn, handsome face haggard in the firelight. “But I needn’t ask—I know! I was a fool ever to leave you.”

“Why? I did not miss you.” She stood before the fire, her hands behind her back, so that her face was in shadow, while the light played on his.

“Do listen and try to trust me,” he said slowly, hunting for words that would terrify her into submission. “You’ve made my father hate you, because of those wild things you said of me when you were shocked, frightened, not yourself. He’s a strange man, and takes fancies that are soon over. His liking for you was one of them.”

“He always hated me,” she said calmly.

Erle shrugged his shoulders.

“That is nonsense. But what I am going to say is earnest, horribly earnest. My father insists you are not in your right mind, that——”

“I am the granddaughter of a madman.” She was strangely cold by the fire. “Well?”

“He’s going to put you in an asylum,” replied Erle brutally. “He will send you away to-morrow.”

Send her away! The house that was her prison seemed suddenly the only place she could not leave.

“He can’t—he daren’t!” she cried. “I would tell all I know.”

“A story of an island, of jaguars, of madness and sudden death,” he continued slowly. “Can’t you see that story would make any doctor call you mad? He wants to get you out of his way; he would stick at nothing to be rid of you.”

“Let me go there!” she muttered.

“Where?” He came toward her, his face changing. “Beryl, do you know what I heard in London? Mother Felicitas is offering a reward for you! How far would you get before she would have you?”

“Mother Felicitas!” she recoiled. She had almost forgotten her.

“A living grave in a convent, or in an asylum, there is not much to choose.” He watched her standing rigid with fear. “Don’t look like that!” he cried, as if pity had overmastered him. “You sha’n’t go to either. I’ll help you; no one shall lay a finger on you.”

“You!”

“I know you hate me,” he said softly, “but I—love you! I’ve forgotten all the cruel things you said, you had had a shock that was enough to drive you wild. And, hate me or not, I mean to take you out of my father’s hands.”

“How?” But she knew.

“In the only way I can. Beryl, marry me. Come away with me out of this nightmare.” He was not acting now, for excellent reasons his very soul was in his eyes. “What have I done to you, but tell you the truth about a woman who was not fit to be near you? Come to me and forget all that. You don’t know what life can be. Are you going to throw yours away? If I could convince my father you are in your right mind I would not tell you all this, but I can’t. All I can do is to make you my wife, and then not all the world can harm you.”

“It is your father who wants you to marry me,” she broke in scornfully. “Why do you pretend?”

“My father would get me the earth if I fancied it. And you may believe me, if he could see you dead rather than my wife, it would suit him equally well, take it or leave it.” For the first time there was a threat in his voice. Where did she get her courage, that she never so much as shrank as he leaned over her?

“To-morrow you can go to the asylum, or marry me! After to-morrow I won’t try to save you. For all I care you can do both!” The words were so easily said, so sinister, that nothing but the scrap of paper in her hand kept her from crying out.

“Scream if you choose,” he said, seeing her tightened lips; “there is no one to hear you. Think, and try, and place, you will see there is no one to help you but me. Oh, Beryl, is it so hard to trust me! You make me brutal, because you make me despair of helping you——”

“Liar! murderer!” she said in his face. For three fierce sentences he had dropped his mask, and she knew there was no love in him, but only most evil passion.

She wrenched away from the hand he stretched out to seize her, and ran from the room.

For once her own was empty. Mrs. Fuller was in the kitchen making ready a decent meal with furious, incapable fingers. Had she been able she would have poisoned the man who forced her to be a servant in his house. Beryl knelt by the fire, and unrolled the paper, all creased from her hot clasp. The next instant she threw it in the fire. It was all a trap. That hand she thought she knew must have been another’s like enough to serve, for the paper held only one sentence, in English, that the madman did not know: “Do all they tell you.”

Dull, lifelessly, Beryl watched it turn to ashes; saw Mrs. Fuller come in and lay a white gown on the bed. And Mrs. Fuller was crying, “Beryl,” and she threw her arms around the motionless girl, “marry him. Give in. Don’t you see?” she pointed to the bed, “it’s a wedding-dress,” she sobbed, for she was frightened for herself now.

“It will do very well,” said Beryl Corselas, with stiff lips, “for a shroud.”

CHAPTER XXXIX.

TAKEN UNAWARES.

“You have a chapel?” asked Father Maurice.

He was an abstemious man; his vile dinner had not troubled him. Indeed, if he had not been afraid to risk weakness, he would not have eaten a crust in this house.

“Yes.”

The late owners of the place had been Catholics.

“But it is disused; in sad repair.”

“It is the only place for a marriage,” said the priest, and Raimond smiled, remembering the inn parlor in which this very man had married him to Andria Heathcote. “If you will allow me and provide me with some candles, I will go and prepare it early in the morning. You wished to have the wedding at seven?”

He looked at Raimond.

“At six. I should have liked you to have seen the bride to-night, but——” he laughed, “well, she was shy! I could not induce her to come down.”

“Yes, yes,” said the priest hastily, and rose, that they might not see his face. “I will go to my room if you will excuse me. I am tired, and must rise early.”

“Your friend may be trustworthy, but he’s damnably unpleasant,” said Erceldonne, as soon as the priest’s back was turned.

“It won’t matter what he is to-morrow morning after the register is signed.”

But even Erle was not easy about the task before him.

“Call Mrs. Fuller, will you? I want to talk to her.”

The low hum of their voices reached Father Maurice, where he paced up and down his room. Regardless of the damp outside, he opened his window and leaned out, and if there had been any one to see his face, something in it might have made them marvel. It was not the face of a fool, or of a friend of Raimond Erle’s.

Then he did a strange thing for a priest and a guest. He took off his shoes, and left the room without a sound. He was gone perhaps ten minutes, and when he came back there were only two voices in that murmur from the room below. Mrs. Fuller’s was missing. He went to the window again and scanned the misty darkness, as if he expected some one, but nothing stirred.

“At dawn,” he thought. “I pray I have not acted unwisely. There are many hours till dawn,” and he sat listening and watching, long after the house was silent.

His task was abhorrent to him; he loathed this semblance of doing evil that good might come, yet he saw no way out of it. When the night changed to dawn, he went his way to a deserted chapel that stood in the grounds.

It was open, and he lit candles on the desolate altar. He was strangely pale after his night’s vigil, and he watched the growing light with grudging eyes.

“Ah!” he said suddenly. He turned away into the moldy vestry and knelt down to pray. When he came out into the empty chapel a beam of sunlight struggled through the dusty glory of the stained windows, and shone like an auriole round him as he stood in his vestments. But to Erceldonne, who entered at that moment, it looked as if the priest were bathed in blood.

Without speaking, he motioned to some one behind him.

Raimond Erle took a girl’s passive hand and laid it on his father’s arm; and passed on to the right hand of the altar.

Step by step, Erceldonne advanced with a terror at his heart for which he had no reason, since the license was right, by what means his son best knew.

The bride, all in white, with a thick lace veil over her dusky hair and pale face, never looked up as she leaned on his arm; made no sign of surprise or dissent as she saw the waiting priest.

Father Maurice, book in hand, never moved as they approached him, but as they sank on their knees he raised his hand, and his voice thrilled through the cold chapel. But not in the familiar Latin Erceldonne, who had been a Catholic when he was anything, expected.

“‘Behold, I will repay, saith the Lord,’” the strong, clear words rang out over the kneeling wedding-party. “‘I have laid a snare for thee, O Babylon; and thou art also taken, for thou wast not aware.’”

“The Presbyterian will come out!” thought Erle, mindful of the priest’s history, and never stirred a finger at the magnificent cry of denunciation.

But Lord Erceldonne knew better.

He had seen the priest’s finger that pointed to something behind him; had turned his head, sprung up, and stood turned to stone.

The chapel was empty no longer.

Between him and the sunlight outside the open door, between him and the desire of his eyes, stood two that were risen from the dead. Behind them, strange men in plain clothes. To Erceldonne the place seemed swarming. He could not draw his breath, and he shook from him the terrified woman’s hand that clutched his arm.

The strange pause made the bridegroom turn. But even he could not speak.

Andria—Andria stood there, with her eyes on his. And Heriot held her hand! Heriot, that was dead in Flores!

Father Maurice stepped to Erle’s side, and touched him lightly on the shoulder.

“Be glad,” he said, “that you have not had time to take another sin upon you! There stands your wife, whom you deserted and left to die. Go to her, ask her pardon on your knees. You told her I was no priest; that I had no right to marry you. I was a minister in the Church of Scotland, and you know it. You were married as hard and fast as I could marry you to-day, when I am an unworthy servant of the Catholic church.”

But Erle never answered. He stood as if he did not feel that hard, light hand on his shoulder, and stared at the woman who was, after all, his wife.

“It’s a lie!” cried Erceldonne fiercely. He caught his son’s nerveless hand. “Raimond, it’s a plot! The priest’s in some one’s pay!”

“The priest,” said Father Maurice, “is in the service of God. Lord Erceldonne, I am the chaplain of St. Mary’s Convent. It was Mother Felicitas who sent me to find your son, and save an innocent girl.”

“Mother Felicitas!” But his jarring laugh stopped unfinished. There was something in the priest’s face, something in the absolute silence of the strange man at the door, that killed his laughter in his throat.

“Your Mother Felicitas is a—a—you fool, she was my mistress! She——”

“She is dead,” said Father Maurice, with a voice that rang. “Her sins lie buried with her. Her confession is in my hands, her repentance in the hands of God, her temptations—are put down to the account of a man whose crimes cry aloud. Long ago, Lord Erceldonne, it seems to you, you tried to take from an old man by violence his adopted daughter. Adopted, not his own, as you well knew. Your elder brother saw you, saved her in one of your own yacht’s boats, and married her. When your elder brother died, leaving a wife and a young child, who was it sent a woman to them? A woman, who thought herself your wife, who loved you till she forgot God in heaven; a desperate, miserable woman, who saw nothing but that her son and yours was disinherited if that little girl lived. Who gave her the morphin that killed Lady Erceldonne? Who asked no questions when the child disappeared and was never found? Who, when a most unhappy woman came to him with all her sins on her head, laughed and told her she was no wife of his—that she and her son were nameless?

“She had done your work. You had no more need of her. But, to keep her lips shut, you promised to care for her boy, to bring him up away from you, but happily, as long as she was silent. And silent she was—till she learned how you kept your promise. How you wearied of supporting the lad, and sent him to the other side of the world to be killed.

“You had no thought, Lord Erceldonne, that such a sinner would confess; that the girl you kidnaped and meant to let die would be your ruin, as soon as you found out that if she lived her mother’s money would set you on your feet. You said she was a madman’s daughter, and you knew all the time she was of the best blood in Spain. A child who was a born dompteuse, an animal-tamer, who had run away to a circus, whose owner retired and took her and his animals to his home in the Azores. Her brother died a year ago; since then, you know best how every part of the world has been ransacked for the daughter of the lost sister, to whom he left his fortune. Beryl, she was christened, for a ring her mother had always worn till she left the circus; Corselas, because the murdered Lady Erceldonne always hoped to take the child to Spain and find her relatives. It was under that name, which seemed a fancy one, that she was left at the convent. That name, which has led to the unraveling of all. The church’s arm is long, Lord Erceldonne, for you. For that most miserable woman, Mother Felicitas, her mercy is infinite.”

“You have no proofs! It is a conspiracy, a lie!” said Erceldonne, but his lips were white.

“This is not a court of justice, nor am I your judge,” returned Father Maurice icily. He beckoned to the men at the door, but some one was nearer, quicker than they.

From an empty vestry there ran a strange figure, bent almost double, that screamed in Spanish as it ran.

“Liar! You said you knew nothing of her? You swore you had no brother. You took the light from my eyes with your story of a stranger, and her shame.”

Before any one could reach him, the jabbering thing had sprung at Erceldonne’s back, and stabbed him with that very dagger that had lain so long idle in his own house.

A shriek ran through the chapel, but it was not Lord Erceldonne’s; he lay quiet on the stone floor, face down.

It was Salome, whom he had wronged, whose life had been hell through him; and the shriek was savage, exultant.

“Be silent,” said Andria fiercely.

As she spoke, the madman flew by her, running and leaping like a monkey, two of the strange men at his heels.

What was the matter with Beryl, that she neither spoke nor came to her; that she never looked up as Heriot laid a hand on her shoulder? Had they drugged her—was she——

Andria Erle ran to the strange figure that was hidden under the lace veil.

“Beryl!” she cried, “it’s I, Andria! You’re safe!”

She put the veil back from the face and stared aghast.

A strange woman stood before her, painted, hollow-eyed; her head covered with long locks cut from Beryl’s hair, wound deftly round it.

“Father! Father Maurice!” cried Andria, in the one breathless instant before the priest could speak and tell her this strange bride was part of his last night’s work. She turned and ran from the church like an arrow from the bow after some one else who had also stared unbelievingly at the false bride.

All she thought was that this was not Beryl, and that Raimond had had a minute’s start of her in the confusion, when all eyes were on the escaping madman and the dead man on the floor.

Across the wet grass, in the light of the wet morning sun, she ran, into the desolate house. Up-stairs, through endless passages, sobbing, stumbling, calling, she went in wild fear.

And each door she opened showed an empty room, each passage led to nothing.

“Beryl!” she screamed. “Beryl!” and from somewhere heard a sound.

She was here, then. And she had read Raimond’s face aright.

“Heriot! Father Maurice!” Andria shrieked from a stair-window, and dared not wait for their coming. She ran on blindly, and burst into the room that was Beryl’s and Mrs. Fuller’s.

There, having waited irresolute a little too long, instead of running to the carriage Father Maurice had told her would be waiting by the chapel, was Beryl Corselas struggling hideously with a man, who had also a carriage waiting with a bullet-headed boy for driver.

“Raimond!” Andria cried. “Run—they are coming! Let her go.”

At her voice he let Beryl go; stood an instant, staring.

“Go!” said Andria, in a dreadful whisper. “Go! Thank God that I am your wife, and must hold my tongue. It is my shame that I ever loved you.”

“Andria,” said her husband softly, very easily. “The Lovely Andria!”

He came toward her, with the long, easy step she had loved.

“Devil!” he cried, and struck her between the eyes.

But there was no force in the blow. A girl’s whole weight had caught him back from behind. He shook it off, and ran down a back stair. Lord Erceldonne’s son had nothing to stay for.

CHAPTER XL.

THE EXPIATION OF MOTHER FELICITAS.

“Andria!” said Beryl wildly, unbelievingly.

“Andria, they told me you were dead.”

She had never spoken when the woman she thought dead had run in; pale, breathlessly, but Andria herself and no ghost. She had only gazed dumfounded; then leaped with the instinct of an animal, and caught Erle’s arm as he would have paid his debt to his wife in full.

“Oh! how did you get here?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.”

Erle’s fist had only grazed her, yet she was leaning helplessly against the wall. She hated him, despised him, and yet—he had struck her; and if he had held out a finger instead she would have gone to the ends of the earth with him still. He was gone out of her sight forever. What ailed her that she could not be glad?

“Didn’t know I was coming?” she forced herself to speak. “Didn’t Father Maurice tell you?”

“Nothing but that Mrs. Fuller was to take my place and I was to run to the carriage. We spoke to her out in the hall, and she was like a child. She did everything he said. She hated Erceldonne, but she was afraid of him. She had owed him money she could not pay; he had her note and could have taken everything she had. Father Maurice told her I would pay everything she owed if she helped me. It was she who thought of cutting off my hair for a wig. Oh, never mind all that! Tell me what has happened?”

She dared not ask for Heriot, lest only one, not two, might have come back alive from Flores.

“Look!” said Andria gently. “Salome and the poor old man saved us.”

Her heart contracted as she thought of the lunatic running over the moors for his life. He had seemed sane enough till now; had begged them with tears to take him to England to see the dearest of his soul again. Had been times messenger to Beryl before they dared come themselves, and now would finish his life in an asylum, away from the animals that he loved.

But Beryl thought of only one thing, one person. Here in the doorway, behind the priest, stood Brian Heriot, alive. He stretched out his hands, and she ran to him. At the sight the woman whom love would know no more turned away.

“Father Maurice,” she said, “let us get away from this dreadful place.”

“Wait,” the priest whispered, “they are bringing him in. It is better for her not to see.”

“Him!” she stammered, thinking of the man who had run from the house.

“Lord Erceldonne.”

He laid a hand on her arm.

“Mr. Erle has gone,” he said quietly, knowing she would never speak that name again. “I must stay and arrange matters for the funeral.”

“But I don’t really understand yet,” Beryl cried out still in the embrace of Heriot. “You were shot and——”

“The poor old crazy man you sent saved me. Salome nursed me back to life again.”

“The old man!” she cried, with a cry that stopped Father Maurice and Andria in their low talk. Beryl dragged her hand from Heriot’s.

“Let me go,” she said, “don’t touch me! I am his granddaughter. It was no wonder I could manage the cats. I am like him, I——”

“You are no relation to him,” said Father Maurice quietly. “Your mother was his adopted daughter; but he had gone too crazy to remember it. She ran away from him and married Lord Erceldonne’s elder brother. You are their daughter.”

“My mother?” she said, in a thick whisper.

“Died long ago,” he would not tell her how yet, “and you were stolen and hidden away in the convent. Only Mother Felicitas knew you were the heiress of Erceldonne. The Lord Erceldonne you knew had never any right to the title, which is one of the few that descend in direct line to male or female heirs. You would have been left to die on that island, but for a fortune left you by your mother’s brother. The papers were full of advertisements for you; so, you see, you were suddenly worth more alive than dead. A marriage with you would not only secure the succession to Raimond Erle, but set him and his father on their feet as to money. You would not have been told of your parentage till you were married. A penniless waif might accept without question a husband whom a viscountess in her own right would refuse.”

“But Andria! He couldn’t have married me.”

“Not if she lived. But he thought her dead. It was she, under Heaven, who saved you. Raimond Erle was married to her by me, at that time a minister in the Presbyterian church, who had given up my charge because I could not preach those things I no longer believed. When he heard, afterward, that I had become a priest of the Catholic church, he made use of it to tell her she was not, nor never had been, his wife.

“Wife or no wife, she was a menace to him; he left her to die. The black servant saved her; the madman gave money to her and Mr. Heriot which brought them to England; to Mother Felicitas, to me, who had performed the ceremony Erle dared call null and void.”

“Mother Felicitas!” she cried. “Do you mean I must go back to her? I won’t! I’ll——”

“Mother Felicitas is dead,” the priest said gravely. “But you are wrong to hate her. She was your friend—in the end. It was she who, when Erceldonne was found tenantless, thought of this Moorland house. She, who, on hearing Mrs. Erle’s story, sent for me, the chaplain of the convent, the only person in all England, by God’s grace, who knew of her marriage. I went to London and discovered Mr. Erle as if by accident; I seemed to believe all he told me. And when I came to this evil house, his wife, Heriot, and the police were at my heels. But I had no time to tell you.”

“But Mother Felicitas,” she said incredulously. “She hates me!”

“Yes,” he answered slowly, “she hated you, but not as you thought. She was a great sinner, but she died like a martyr. She repented.”

Even now he remembered with how great a courage. There had been no half-measures in her atonement; no shielding of herself, or of that reputation that had been dearer than life.

He had been as stunned as the nuns when, after a service for the dead for which she asked him, the Mother Superior had risen in her stall in the chapel and faced them all—every nun in the convent and himself.

She was the color of ashes, even to her lips; and she swayed as she stood.

She began very quietly; she asked their prayers, their patience.

When her long story was done, each nun was on her knees. Was the reverent mother raving, that she should call herself a murderess, a hypocrite, a blasphemer? That she gave chapter and verse of her sins, her great humiliation?

She stood in the silence that was full of hushed weeping, and beckoned to the convent chaplain, then led the way to the confessional.

In agony she wrote a deposition, in agony she gave those directions that had saved Beryl Corselas, and fell on her knees.

“You will excommunicate me!” she said.

Father Maurice had raised his hands, and spoken. And as he finished a great cry rang out to the listening nuns.

He had absolved her, as One Higher than he had forgiven the dying thief on the cross. But when he would have raised her from her knees, she was dead.

He roused himself now, and looked for a long moment at Beryl Corselas.

“Pray,” he said gently, “that you may make as good an ending.” Then he went away, to begin his watch by the dead.

“Come,” said Heriot softly. “Let us go.”

And, with Andria’s hand in hers, Beryl Corselas, who was Beryl Corselas no longer, left that house of crime.

There is little more to tell.

The madman who had paid his lifelong debt to Lord Erceldonne was never found. If he perished miserably on the wild moorlands, his misshapen bones were never discovered; if with the cunning of madness, he made his way back to the Azores, there was no one who suggested it to the police, though perhaps Andria Erle might have been able to, had she wished.

Raimond Erle, rather than face bankruptcy and disinheritance, slipped away to Mexico; and there he died in a gambling-brawl.

In his stead there reigned Beryl, Viscountess Erceldonne, whose husband was the Honorable Brian Heriot, next heir to the baronage of Heriot, for his brother never married. He was true to his word; he never touched a penny of her vast fortune. She spent it nearly all in helping the outcast and wretched.

The sham Mrs. Fuller was a white slave no more. She lived at peace with the husband she loved—the man whom Lord Erceldonne had sworn to ruin, and thus had maintained an overmastering influence over her.

Ebenezer Davids lighted lamps no more. He and his wife left the lodge at the great gate of Erceldonne, and he prided himself greatly that it was he who first discovered his present mistress was “the spit and image of his lordship.”

And the whole truth about Mother Felicitas Lady Erceldonne never knew. There is no loyalty like that of religious women. Not a nun in the convent ever opened her lips, not one but was helped on the narrow path by the memory of the expiation of Mother Felicitas.

Salome, faithful still, worshiped Beryl’s child, which was named Andria.

And Andria?

At twenty-four no one can say their life is done.

Andria Erle took up hers and was living it, not a pensioner on Beryl’s bounty, nor a nun in a convent.

On the boards of the Queen’s Theater she became an actress whom princes were glad to applaud, whom great ladies visit. Men laid titles and fortunes at her feet, but she remained Andria Erle; beautiful, gentle, and a little unapproachable!

Time, instead of adding lines to her face, had smoothed the hardness and bitterness from it.

But to no one had she ever spoken of Raimond Erle.

THE END.

No. 1119 of The New Eagle Series, entitled “In Love’s Paradise,” by Charlotte M. Stanley, is bright and entertaining from the first line and will keep the reader engrossed until the last chapter is read.

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Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

Table of contents has been added and placed into the public domain by the transcriber.

The line: “‘Miss Holbeach; thank you!’ He just glanced at” was missing from the book due to a typesetting error; the lost text was restored from the original serial appearance in Street & Smith’s New York Weekly, v. 54, no. 50 (September 30, 1899), page 1.

On page 214, the line “the words died on her tongue remembered how the girl had mastered the jaguar” appears to be missing words. The original serial installment for this chapter could not be located, and this is reproduced here as printed in the book version.

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