I am heart-sick of the whole business. Since
the world began, was there ever a poor devil
came into it so worried and persecuted?

"Well, now you write in your old way, warning
me desperate consequences may ensue, fatal
to us both. Fatal to us both! Exactly; if you
would make me supremely happy, show me
that. It seems to me the only course. As for
him, don't be afraid. I am afraid I must be
very ill indeed when I can speak so calmly.
The fact is, I am dead beat. Only mind this, if
he is making your life miserable, as you seem to
say he is, trying his infamous Blue Beard tricks,
his glarings and suspicions, if I was in the
agonies of death, I should get up and come to
you, and scourge him round his own house.
Ah! that is all I care for now. I have
something on my cheek to remind me of him, and if
I could get strength to get to him and pay him
off that old score, which I think of day and
night, I think I should be easy in my mind. I
have never forgotten it a moment, and I can
tell you at this moment—for I have got the
glass over and am looking at it—it is ugly and
angry enough, and smarts like hell. Ah! I
shall have his cheek under my arm one day.

" My dear sweet, I wish I had your soft
face looking down on me at this moment, and
your nice musical voice in my ear. O, you
stupid, stupid, insensible child, not to have
understood me long ago; not to have known
that I was a rough proud savage, that would
not let any woman know that I loved her. I
knew you were mine, but I would not let you
know l was yours. I often think of that
wretched day at the vestry door, when he was
inside signing the books and paying the fees.
Ah! if you had told me all you told me then,
only half an hour before! Yet only for you he
had never been so near his grave as at that
moment.

"Well, you want to know what I shall do
now. He shall have a little peace till I get
well, and after what you say I shall get well;
for there is business waiting for me, something
that will surprise both you and him. Never
mind now. I say no more. I am getting ready
a screw, a single turn of which will make his
white face turn like a sheet of paper. We have
hunted up something that he thinks is what
they call ' secret as the grave,' and which he
thinks he made all safe years ago. You little
know what you have married. No matter; all
in good time. Wait, only wait, my sweet darling
(you see what a mood I am in). We'll let our
friend shut his eyes a little, and then we shall see.
"R.

"I have got some of your dear old letters
here, and am going to read 'em, though my
poor eyes are dim enough. There's sentiment
for you!"

She could hardly draw breath, thinking of
the narrow escape they had had. It was,
indeed, fortunate; though she had nothing to
reproach herself with. Yet the sense of this
relief was lost in a fresh agony of doubts and
trouble. What was this secret the restless
frantic Ross had been " hunting up"? For
long, indeed, had some such thought crossed
her suddenly and uneasily, but she had always
dismissed it. This looked circumstantial, even
seen through Ross's strange ravings.

What did it mean? What was coming? But
then how generous—how noble of him! What
confidence he had placed in her!

Alas for Mr. Tillotson's confidence! At that
moment he was below, in an agony of grief and
misery, and almost fury. Scarcely knowing
what he did, he had read that letter, and put
his own seal to it.

CHAPTER XXII. GATHERING PROOFS.

MR. TILLOTSON was now deep in some
momentous concerns of the great bank. These
tremendous operations required great attention and
much secret planning. Yet it was remarked
that he had grown absent and almost indifferent,
which was the more surprising, after they had
remarked his sudden change to buoyancy and
happiness, and how the clouds had passed from
his brow, and how, in short, " that marriage had
been the makings of him." Alas! now it
seemed that some other cause had been the
"unmakings" of him, and the puzzled men at
the office could only set him down as " the
oddest, queerest cove," whom there was " no
havin' any way;" and one gentleman with
whom Mr. Tillotson had been obliged to be
severe, indemnified himself by repeating privily
that that 'ere fellow would be as mad as a hare
before long, or his name was not Baker.

The "operation" that now engrossed the
company was Mr. Lackson's grand contract
for the Railway Roofing Company. The great
and daring scheme for covering in the seven
united railways had been much talked about,
and various grand iron companies had striven
hard to obtain the contract. But the diplomacy
of the great Lackson, who knew peers
and ambassadors, and specially our
ambassador out at Madrid, had secured this
concession, and he had generously determined
that the company with which he was
connected, and only that company, should have the
bringing out or floating of the project. It
was whispered that huge bonuses, bribes in
fact, had been offered by other societies to
draw off the great Lackson, as was indeed
only natural in the case of a man who had but
to touch anything to turn it into gold. But
he steadily held to his friends, spoke as little as
usual, and yet had put some fifty or sixty thousand
pounds, with chance of much more, in the
way of the bank, without claiming any special
credit for the motive.

If he spoke little to the board, he spoke much
less to the chairman. He seemed to be shy
of him, as one of the officers put it. He rarely
discussed anything with him, and when Mr.
Tillotson was giving his views, looked towards
the window and became abstracted. It was to
be seen that he held the chairman's financiering at
a very low level. In private, however, his tongue
was sometimes more free, and he said to a friend
or two on the board, who admired his success and