leave me. Put the seas between us. It is the
only chance. And take her with you. She must
not be sacrificed."

He was amazed. "Put the seas between us,"
he said. "And you ask me to do this?"

"I do! I do!" she said. "I would repair the
mischief I have done. I should have kept away
from your household, but some miserable fate
has driven me on. I thought I was doing what
was right; but I was blind—stone blind—and I
was wicked, too. But you will go?"

(Other passers-by now looking in curiously,
and seeing Pauline's sparkling eyes, said
within themselves, "Here is a gallant little
quarrel going on in this public-private place.")

He shook his head. There was a
bewildered pleasure beaming in his eyes.
"Anything but that," he said. "You can't ask me
that. I could not do it. It is hard to ask me.
Now, too, that we are beginning to know each
other, and to understand each other."

"Ah, that is it!'' she said, with a groan. "You
don't understand me. No one does. No one
knows what I am, or what I have been doing.
I dare not even hint it to you. But I tell you,
it is the only chance for me. You will go, will
you not?"

Again the look of triumph was in his eye.
"You know," he said, "my position. I am only
a slave in that house. I can neither go nor stay.
They bought me, and I must stand by the terms
of the bargain."

She seemed to see this, and covered her face
up in her hands. A man passing, who had
read a good deal of French romance at his club,
looked back with extraordinary interest, and
thought it very like a scene in the Ames Perdus,
by Charles Loupgarou.

"Then we are lost," she said, despairingly,
"all of us!" She told the coachman to drive
on.

"Wait, wait," said he, hastily; "we shall see.
We must talk of this—I must see you—"

"Think! Talk!" she said, angrily. "There
has been too much of that. We must do now
—act. But it is all too late."

Miss Manuel went home miserable, and
almost distracted, In her drawing-room she
flung herself on the sofa with her face to the
cushions. "What am I to do?" she groaned.
"Some curse is on me. Some fury is driving me
onward."

So it seemed, indeed. She was so bound
up, so encompassed about. She could dare
turn back. An iron fate, cruel and pitiless as
ever lived in a Greek tragedy, was hurrying her
on. She thought of the soft suffering face of her
lost sister, as it lay before her on that final
Sunday morning.

"Fool that I was," said Pauline, in a fresh
agony, "wicked fool! to have thought that so
sweet a soul could have required to be soothed
or laid, by savage and unchristian vengeance,"
and she shuddered as she thought of the
awful character of the retribution she had
heaped on the head of that poor artless,
impetuous, but innocent Mrs, Fermor. "What is
to be done?" she said, distractedly. "Who is
there to help me?" Who indeed! Not one in
that house, not her brother, who was watching
jealously, suspiciously, and now panting for
prompter vengeance.

There was scarcely any equivoque here, such
as takes place in a play, because Pauline could
not bring herself to tell Fermor how she had been
behaving to his wife. Nor, in fact, would she
have cared now, had she even suspected the
view he took of her agitated requests. Every
other consideration was sunk in the one aim
and object—the undoing of what she had
done. A skeleton in a cupboard! Here was a
decaying mouldering corpse, locked up
decomposing, and mottled over with the black spots of
a plague. Day and night she could not shut out
the image of that pretty, impetuous, fresh young
creature, whose ruin she had so craftily—
"devilishly," she said to herself planned.

Motion—action was her only resource. At
home there was no hope. Those gloomy eyes of
her brother—now more gloomy and more
truculent than ever—were upon her. They
were suspicious, and brought her to account.
Hanbury she saw again.

"What can you do for me?" she said, almost
on her knees. "Help me! Save me! You once
loved us, and loved her. O, I dare not tell you
what I have done. You cannot guess it even,
and you will not ask it. But you will help me
—help her—save that poor child!"

In such wild accusations John Hanbury had
no faith. She was one of his Saints. He thought
long and wistfully of what he was to do.

"I would give the world," he said, earnestly,
"and not the world only—for that would be no
sacrifice—but my blood, heart, life—everything
for you! But I am not quick at planning.
If I saw her—that poor girl—"

"Ah, yes!" said Pauline, eagerly, "she will
trust you, she will listen to you. Speak to her
in your own natural honest way, and she will
listen. She has not this horrible distrust of you,
though, indeed, it is not her fault. It is only
natural that she should shrink from me."

"Ah," said Hanbury, sadly, "if she only knew
her interest, she would fly to you, she would—-"

"No, no," said she, hastily; "she is right
there. You do not know me either. I am not
a woman for the young and innocent to fly to."

Hanbury's eyes were turned on her, wondering
and inquiring. This was the too-scrupulous
self-accusation of his Saint.

"You will go to her," went on Pauline. "Get
them away—secretly; get them to leave this
dreadful London. All of them—father, husband,
all. It is the only chance. I know that wicked
Romaine; his Will gives him power. He has done
everything that he has laid out, and he has laid
this out. Go quickly," she said, hurriedly, and in
terror, as if it might be already too late.
"Persuade her. See her father. He wishes to leave