“Except in one way,” cut in the other in a sharp, dry, hard voice.  “If this girl whom I marry to-night were to die suddenly on the wedding trip, for instance, I would come in for her fortune; then, when the excitement blew over, I could go to Gertrude and say—­”

The sentence was never finished, for at that moment the door of the vehicle was suddenly wrenched open, and with a piercing cry Faynie sprang out into the raging storm and the inky blackness of the night.

A terrible imprecation broke from the lips of the handsome scoundrel by her side.

“I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut that that little fool tricked us by feigning unconsciousness, and has heard every word we uttered.  Of course, it’s to be regretted, but that doesn’t change my plans a particle.  I’ll be the husband of the willful little heiress in an hour’s time, or my name isn’t—­”

“Lester Armstrong,” put in the other, laconically.

The coach was instantly stopped, and both men made a flying leap into the huge snowdrift that banked both sides of the country road, calling back to the driver to light a lantern, if he had been careful enough to bring one with him, and hand it to them in double-quick order.

The search lasted for fully half an hour.  Had the ground suddenly opened and swallowed her? they asked each other, with imprecations both loud and furious.

To have a fortune of a cool million so near his clutches, and suddenly lose it, was more than the villain could endure calmly.  He was frenzied.  His rage at the girl slipping so cleverly, so audaciously, through his fingers knew no bounds, and he made no attempt to stifle the fierce exclamations that sprang to his lips of what he should do when he once found her.

When Faynie had jumped from the vehicle she lay for an instant half stunned upon the cold, frozen ground where she had fallen.  It had taken the coach a minute to stop, but that minute had carried it several rods beyond the spot where she lay.  She saw by the uncertain glimmer of the carriage lamp the two forms spring out into the darkness and come back in search of her, and a piteous cry of unutterable fear rose to her blanched lips from the very depths of her panting, terror-stricken heart.

She tried to spring to her feet and fly, but the depth to which she sank with every step exhausted her quickly, and she sank down among the white drifts awaiting her doom like a wounded bird in the brush whom the cruel sportsmen are nearing with their hounds.

She raised her lovely young face to the dark night sky, calling upon God and the angels to protect her, to save her from the man she had loved with all the passionate strength of her heart up to that hour, and whom she hated and feared now a thousandfold more than she had ever loved him.

All in a few moments of time her idol had fallen from its high pedestal of manly honor and lay in ruins at her feet.