transaction, and that Mr. Darrington would soon go back to Germany.  Then he added:  ’Singleton, present my respects to Miss Brentano and tell her, I am happy to say that my trip West last summer was not entirely unsuccessful.  It has furnished me with a very valuable clue.  She will understand.’  Oh, dear! how bitterly cold it is!  Come to my room, and get thoroughly thawed; Ned is down stairs, and the children are asleep.”

“No, thank you; I should only feel the cold more, when I came back.”

“Then take my shawl and cover your ears and throat.  There, you must.  Good night.”

She closed the door, and fled down the long black passage, to the bright cozy room, where her babes slumbered.

Slowly Beryl resumed her walk from window to door, from bar to bar, but of the stinging cold she grew oblivious; and the blood burned in her cheeks and throbbed with almost suffocating violence at her heart.

She comprehended fully the significance of the message, and dared not comfort herself with the supposition that it was prompted by a spirit of bravado.

To what quarter of the globe was he tracking the desperate culprit, who had fled sorely wounded from his murderous assault?  Ignorant of his mother’s death, and of his sister’s expiatory incarceration, might not Bertie venture back to the great city, where she had last seen him; and be trapped by those wily “Quaestores Paricidii” of the nineteenth century—­special detectives?

Fettered, muzzled by the stone walls of her dungeon, she could send him no warning, could only pray and endure, while she and her reckless, wayward brother drifted helplessly down the dark, swift river of doom.  At every revival of fears for his safety, up started the mighty temptation that never slumbered, to confess all to Mr. Dunbar; but as persistently she took it by the throat, and crushed it back, resolved at all hazards to secure, if possible, the happiness of the woman who had trusted her.

In the midst of the wreck of her life, out of the depths of the dust of humiliation, had sprung the beautiful blossom of love, shedding its intoxicating fragrance over ruin; yet, because the asp of treachery lurked in the exquisite, folded petals, she shut her eyes to the bewildering loveliness, and loyalty strove to tear it up by the roots, to trample it out; learning thereby, that the fibrous thread had struck deep into her own heart, defying ejectment.

She had forbidden his visits, interdicted letters; but she could not expel the vision of a dear face that haunted her memory; nor exorcise the spell of a voice that had first thrilled her pulses when pleading with the jury in her behalf.

Sometimes she wondered whether she had been created as a mere sentient plummet to sound every gulf of human woe; then humbly recanted the impious repining, and thanked God that, at least, she had been spared that deepest of all abysses, the Hades of remorse.  That which comes to most women as the supreme earthly joy—­the consciousness of possessing the heart of the man they love, fell upon Beryl like the lash of flagellation; rendering doubly fierce the battle of renunciation, which she fought, knowing that sedition and treason were raising the standard of revolt within the fortress.