but she saw and understood them. Her heart
gave one angry bound under the paper which
lay securely in her bosom, but her steady face
took no change from the pulsation.

"Sorry I couldn't get back. I got away as
soon as I could," said Routh, as he threw aside
his coat and put his hat down. Harriet pushed
a chair towards him, and he sat down before
she answered:

"I am sorry, too, Stewart. I can hardly
think any business can have equalled in
importance such an occurrence as this."

She put George Dallas's letter into his hand,
and eagerly watched him, while, with a face
convulsed by anger, hatred, and all unholy
passions, he read it.

If she could have seen his heart! If she
could have read the devilish project that filled
it! If she could have seen that in the discovery
of the new and urgent danger he had seen, not
blind to that danger indeed, but catching at the
chance included in it, a means of realising his
atrocious plot against her! If she could have
distinguished, amid the surging, passionate
thoughts and impulses which raged within him,
this one, which each second made more clear:

"This is my opportunity. All is settled, all
is right; she and I are safe. I have triumphed,
and this cursed letter gives me a better chance
than any I could have formed or made. This
infernal idiot is always my curse and my dupe;
however, he has done me a good turn this time."

If Harriet, watching the changes in her husband's
countenance, could have read these
thoughts, she might have interpreted aright the
ferocity which blazed in his wicked eyes, while a
cynical sneer curled his lip, as he flung the letter
violently on the floor, starting up from his chair.

Harriet had seen Routh in a passion more
than once, though only once had that passion
been directed against herself, and she was not
a woman, even when its victim, to be frightened
by a man's temper. But she was frightened
now, really and truly frightened, not, however,
by the violence of his rage, but because she did
not believe in it. She did not understand his
game; she saw he was playing one; why he
feigned this fury she could not comprehend, but
she knew it was feigned, and she was frightened.
Against complicated deception of this kind she
was powerless. She could not oppose successful
art to the ingenious skill with which he was
courting his own ruin, to save him. She could
not disentangle this thought from the confusion
in her brain; she felt only its first thrill
of conviction, she only shrank from it with
swift, sharp, physical pain, when Routh turned
upon her with a torrent of angry and fierce
reproaches.

"This is your doing," he said, the violence
of his simulated anger hurrying his words, and
rendering them almost unintelligible. " I owe
it to you that this cursed fool has me in his
power, if the idiot only finds it out, and knows
how to use it, more securely than I ever had him
in mine. This is your skill and your wisdom;
your caution and your management, is it? Like
a fool, I trusted a woman—you were always so
sure of yourself, you know, and here's the
result. You keep this pretty piece of conviction
in your desk, and produce it just in the nick of
time. I don't wonder you wanted me home;
I don't wonder you were in such a hurry to give
me such a proof of your boasted cleverness."

Her clear blue eyes were upon him; his restless
black eyes shifted under her gaze, but could
not escape it. She did not release him for an
instant from that piercing look, which became,
with each word he spoke, more and more alight
with scorn and power. The steady look
maddened him, the feigned passion changed to
real rage, the man's evil face paled.

She slightly raised her hand, and pointed to
the chair he had left; he kicked it savagely
away. She spoke, her hand still extended.
"Stewart, I do not understand you, but I am
not taken in by you. What are you aiming at?
Why are you pretending to this violent and
unreasonable anger?"

"Pretending!" he exclaimed, with an oath;
"it is no pretence, as you shall find.
Pretending!  Woman, you have ruined me,
and I say——"

"And I say," she interposed, as she slowly
rose, and stood upright before him, her head
raised, her steady eyes still mercilessly set on
his, " this is a vain and ridiculous pretence. You
cannot long conceal its motive from me:
whatever game you are playing, I will find it out."

"Will you, by——?" he said, fiercely.

"I will, for your own sake," she answered,
calmly. And, standing before him, she touched
him lightly on the breast with her small white
hand. " Stop! don't speak. I say, for your own
sake. You and I, Stewart, who were once one,
are two now; but that makes no change in me.
I don't reproach you."

"Oh, don't you?" he said. "I know better.
There's been nothing but whining and
reproaches lately."

"Now you are acting again, and again I tell
you I will find out why. The day of reproach
can never—shall never—come; the day of ruin
is near, awfully near——"

"You've taken care of that."

"Again! You ought to know me better,
Stewart; you can't lie to me undetected. In
time I shall know the truth, now I discern the
lie. But all this is vain. Read once more."
She took up the letter, smoothed it out, and
held it towards him. He struck it out of her
hand, and cursed her.

She looked at him in blank amazement for a
moment, and then said:

"You are not drunk again, Stewart? You
are not mad? If you are not, listen to me, for
your fate is rushing upon you. The time may
be counted by hours. Never mind my share in
this new event, never mind what you really
think, or what you pretend to think about it.
It makes my appeal to you strong, irresistible.
This is no fit of woman's terror; this is no whim,
no wish to induce you to desert your harvest-field,
to turn your back upon the promise of the only