before them and the obscure, nameless ticket of leave man awaiting his entrance in the vault below!  The incongruity of this thought, with the smug complacency of the worldly minded congregation sitting around him, and the probable smiling carelessness of the reckless rover—­the cause of all—­even now idly pacing the deck on the distant sea, touched him with horror.  And when added to this was the consciousness that Sibyl Eversleigh was forced to become an innocent actor in this hideous comedy, it seemed as much as he could bear.  Again he questioned himself, Was he right to withhold his secret from her?  In vain he tried to satisfy his conscience that she was happier in her ignorance.  The resolve he had made to keep his relations with her apart from his secret, he knew now, was impossible.  But one thing was left to him.  Until he could disclose his whole story—­until his lips were unsealed by Captain Dornton—­he must never see her again.  And the grim sanctity of the edifice seemed to make that resolution a vow.

He did not dare to raise his eyes again toward her pew, lest a sight of her sweet, grave face might shake his resolution, and he slipped away first among the departing congregation.  He sent her a brief note from the inn saying that he was recalled to London by an earlier train, and that he would be obliged to return to California at once, but hoping that if he could be of any further assistance to her she would write to him to the care of the bank.  It was a formal letter, and yet he had never written otherwise than formally to her.  That night he reached London.  On the following night he sailed from Liverpool for America.

Six months had passed.  It was difficult, at first, for Randolph to pick up his old life again; but his habitual earnestness and singleness of purpose stood him in good stead, and a vague rumor that he had made some powerful friends abroad, with the nearer fact that he had a letter of credit for a thousand pounds, did not lessen his reputation.  He was reinstalled and advanced at the bank.  Mr. Dingwall was exceptionally gracious, and minute in his inquiries regarding Miss Eversleigh’s succession to the Dornton property, with an occasional shrewdness of eye in his interrogations which recalled to Randolph the questioning of Miss Eversleigh’s friends, and which he responded to as cautiously.  For the young fellow remained faithful to his vow even in thinking of her, and seemed to be absorbed entirely in his business.  Yet there was a vague ambition of purpose in this absorption that would probably have startled the more conservative Englishman had he known it.

He had not heard from Miss Eversleigh since he left, nor had he received any response from the captain.  Indeed, he had indulged in little hopes of either.  But he kept stolidly at work, perhaps with a larger trust than he knew.  And then, one day, he received a letter addressed in a handwriting that made his heart leap, though he had seen it but once, when it conveyed the news of Sir William Dornton’s sudden illness.  It was from Miss Eversleigh, but the postmark was Callao!  He tore open the envelope, and for the next few moments forgot everything—­his business devotion, his lofty purpose, even his solemn vow.