Fear, abject fear, obtained complete ascendency over every sense, and personal safety became my sole consideration.  I, who had boasted so lately of my courage, felt the cold dew of cowardice bathe my brow, its tremor shake my frame.

They were plotting—­deliberately plotting, as the price of secrecy on one part—­to shut me up in a lunatic asylum until my consent could be obtained to that ill-starred marriage!

“Every thing is favorable to this undertaking,” I heard Mr. Bainrothe say; “her own moody and excitable condition of late—­the absence of her physician (meddlesome people, those conscientious medical men sometimes prove, even when not asked for an opinion!)—­Mrs. Austin’s testimony as to those lethargies, which would be conclusive of itself—­our own disinterestedness, so fully proved by our devotion to her and Mabel, under difficulties—­her mother’s mysterious malady—­all these things will make it easy to carry out this plan in which your cheerful coincidence, and perhaps Claude’s even, will be essential.”

“I doubt whether you succeed in gaining him over,” she remarked, coldly; “and, as to me, I shall act as you desire, perhaps, but any thing but ‘cheerfully,’ I assure you.  I consider it a mighty price to pay for—­” she hesitated.

“A fortune and a husband?” he queried.  “Claude has his suspicions, I well know, but they rest on me alone so far.  Could he be convinced of your part in distracting Miriam’s gold from its legitimate channel, believe me, he would turn his back on you forever!  I know the man.”

“Yet he saw me—­he must have seen me—­alter that word in the codocil to my aunt’s legacy—­asking no explanation at the time, receiving none thereafter.”

“That was different; he thought it a piece of vainglory on your part alone, amounting to nothing, if, indeed, he observed it at all.  No, no, Evelyn Erle! if you expect to carry out your views, you must aid me in executing mine.  I shall keep your secret from my son on no other conditions.  We are confederates or nothing in this matter, you see.”

“And suppose, in return, I publish yours to the world,” she suggested, coolly; “brand you with baseness?  What then, Basil Bainrothe—­what then?”

“You dare not!” was the prompt reply.  “I hold written propositions of yours on the subject—­you have not a scratch of a pen of mine to show.  I should declare simply that you were a frustrated rogue, that is all.  Who could prove otherwise?” He laughed in his derisive way.  There was a bitter pause.

“What is it you want me to do?” she asked, hoarsely, at its expiration.  “State definitely what you exact from me in return for your forbearance—­your honorable secrecy?” There was exquisite irony in her tone.