“That is as it may be,” said Lord Atherton, quietly.  “You may have deceived a very young and inexperienced girl; but you would not, perhaps, have been so successful when that same girl was able to compare you with others.  Now I have paid you; remember, I do not seek to purchase your silence.  I leave it entirely to your own option whether you tell your story or not.  I know that you cannot brand yourself with deeper disgrace and shame than by making public your share in this transaction.”

Allan Lyster murmured some insolent words which his lordship did not choose to hear.  He straightened the lash of his whip.

“Now,” he continued, blandly, “I am going to give you a lesson.  I am going to teach you several things.  The first is to respect the trusts that parents and governesses place in you when they confide young girls to you for lessons; the second, is to respect women, and not, like a vile, mean coward, to trade upon their secrets; and the third lesson I wish to give you is to make you an honest man, to teach you to live on your own earnings, and not on the price of a woman’s tears.  This is how I would enforce my lesson.”

He raised that strong right arm of his and rained down heavy blows on the cowardly traitor who had taken a woman’s money as the price of his honor and manhood.  His face never for one moment lost its calm; but the strong arm did its work, until the coward whined for pity.  Then Lord Atherton broke his whip in two and flung it on the floor.

“I should not like to touch even a dog with it,” he said, “after it has touched you.”

He stood still for some moments to see if the coward would make any effort to rise and revenge himself; but the man who had been content to live on a woman’s misery thought the safest plan was to lie still on the floor.

“I shall be happy to repeat my lesson,” said his lordship, calmly, “if you require it again.”

Allan Lyster made no reply, and Lord Atherton walked away.  When he was quite gone, and the last sound of his footsteps died away, he rose—­he shook his fist in impotent wrath: 

“Curse him!” he cried.  “It shall go hard with me but I will be equal with him yet!”

He had played his last card and lost; henceforward there was nothing for him but hard work and dishonor.  He knew that what Lord Atherton had said was true; if any one knew what he had done, nothing but hatred and disgust would be his portion.

Lord Atherton went at once to Scotland Yard and asked for a detective.  He showed him the portrait of his wife, told him she had left home under a false impression, and that he would give him fifty pounds if he could trace her.

For a week all effort was in vain, they could hear nothing of her; then one morning Lord Atherton saw an advertisement in the “Times,” and he said to himself that the lost was found.

CHAPTER XV.