knowledge she did not share, made it all the
more true. Supposing he determined to
denounce George, and supposing Harriet refused
to aid him, what then? Then he must only
set her at defiance. If such a wild impossibility
as her betraying him could become real, it would
be useless. She was his wife; she could not
bear witness against him; in that lay his strength
and security, even should the very worst, the
most inconceivably unlikely of human events,
come to pass. And he would set her at
defiance! He kept up no reticence with himself
now. Within a few days a change had come
upon him, which would have been terrible
even to him, had he studied it. He hated her.
He hated her, not only because he had fallen
madly in love with another woman and was
day by day becoming more enslaved by this new
passion: not chiefly even because of this, but
because she was a living link between him and
the past. That this should have happened now!
That she should have right and reason, common
sense, and all the force of probability on her side,
in urging him to fly, now—now when he was
prospering, when the success of a new speculation
in which he had just engaged would, with
almost absolute certainty, bring him fortune,—
this exasperated him almost to the point of
frenzy.

Then there arose before his tossed and
tormented mind the vision of a blissful
possibility. This other beautiful, fascinating woman,
who had conquered him by a glance of her
imperial eyes, who had beckoned him to her
feet by a wave of her imperial hand—could he
not make her love him well enough to sacrifice
herself for him also? Might he not escape from
the toils which were closing around him into a
new, a glorious liberty, into a life of wealth, and
pleasure, and love? She had yielded so
immediately to the first influence he had tried to exert
over her; she had admitted him so readily to an
intimacy to whose impropriety, according to the
strict rules of society, she had unhesitatingly
avowed herself aware and indifferent; she had
evinced such undisguised pleasure in his society,
and had accepted his unscrupulous homage so
unscrupulously, that he had as much reason as
a coarse-minded man need have desired for
building up a fabric of the most presumptuous
hope.

As these thoughts swept over him, Routh
turned from the window, and began again to
stride up and down the room. His dark face
cleared up, the hot blood spread itself over his
sallow cheek, and his deep-set eyes sparkled
with a sinister light. The desperate expedient
to which he had resorted on the previous day
had gained him time, and time was everything
in the game he designed to play. The discovery
would not be made for some time by George
Dallas. When it should be made, his triumph
might be secured, he might be beyond the reach
of harm from such a cause, safe in an elysium,
with no haunting danger to disturb. The others
concerned might be left to their fate—left to get
out of any difficulty that might arise, as best
they could. The time was short, but that
would but inspire him with more courage and
confidence; the daring of desperation was a
mood which suited Stewart Routh well.

Hours told in such cases. The fire and
earnestness with which he had spoken to the
beautiful widow had evidently surprised and,
he thought, touched her. If the demonstration
had not been made in his own favour, but in
that of another, no one would have more readily
understood than Stewart Routh how much
beauty of form and feature counts for in the
interpretation of emotion, how little real meaning
there may be in the beam of a dark bright
eye, how little genuine emotion in the flush of a
rose-tinted cheek. But it was his own case,
and precisely because it was, Stewart Routh
interpreted every sign which his captor had
made according to his wishes rather than
by the light of his experience. Indeed, he
had little experience of a kind to avail him
in the present instance; his experience had
been of stronger, even more dangerous types
of womanhood than that which Mrs.
Bembridge represented, or of the infinitely meaner
and lower. As he mused and brooded over the
vision which had flashed upon him, not merely
as a possibility to be entertained, as a hope to
be cherished, but as something certain and
definite to be done, his spirits, his courage, his
audacity rose, and the dark cloud of dread and
foreboding fell from him. He had so long known
himself for a villain, that there was not even a
momentary recoil in his mind from the exceeding
baseness of the proceeding which he
contemplated.

"I can count upon a fortnight," he said to
himself, while completing a careful toilet, "and
by that time I shall either be away from all
this with her, or I shall be obliged to put
George Dallas in jeopardy. If I fail with her
—but I won't think of failure; I cannot fail."
He left a message for Harriet, to the effect that
he should not dine at home that day (but without
any explanation of his further movements),
and went out.

"I do not see the force of your reasons for
objecting to my introducing you to my
mother," said George Dallas to Harriet. Mrs.
Carruthers had passed them in an open carriage
during their walk, and George had urged
Harriet to make his mother's acquaintance.

"Don't you?" she replied, with a smile in
which weariness and sadness mingled. "I think
you would, if you thought over them a little.
They include the necessity for avoiding anything
like an unpleasant or distressing impression on
her mind, and you know, George,"  she said,
anticipating and silencing deprecation by a
gesture, "if she remembers your mention of
me at all, she can remember it only to be
distressed by it; and the almost equally important
consideration of not incurring your step-father's
anger in any way."

"As for that, I assure you he is everything
that is kind to me now," said George.