“Oh, Edward!  Edward!” exclaimed his wife, in a distressed voice.  “What has so blinded you to the real quality of this man?  ’By their fruit ye shall know them.’  And is not the first fruit, we have plucked from this tree, bitter to the taste?”

“You are excited and bewildered in thought, Agnes,” said Mr. Markland, in a soothing voice.  “Let us waive this subject for the present, until both of us can refer to it with a more even heart-beat.”

Mrs. Markland caught her breath, as if the air had suddenly grown stifling.

“Will they ever beat more evenly?” she murmured, in a sad voice.

“Why, Agnes!  Into what a strange mood you have fallen!  You are not like yourself.”

“And I am not, to my own consciousness.  For weeks it has seemed to me as if I were in a troubled dream.”

“The glad waking will soon come, I trust,” said Mr. Markland, with forced cheerfulness of manner.

“I pray that it may be so,” was answered, in a solemn voice.

There was silence for some moments, and then the other’s full heart overflowed.  Mr. Markland soothed her, with tender, hopeful words, calling her fears idle, and seeking, by many forms of speech, to scatter the doubts and fears which, like thick clouds, had encompassed her spirit.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

FROM that period, Mr. Markland not only avoided all conference with his wife touching their daughter’s relation to Mr. Lyon, but became so deeply absorbed in business matters, that he gave little earnest thought to the subject.  As the new interests in which he was involved grew into larger and larger importance, all things else dwindled comparatively.

At the end of six months he was so changed that, even to his own family, he was scarcely like the same individual.  All the time he appeared thinking intensely.  As to “Woodbine Lodge,” its beauties no longer fell into thought or perception.  The charming landscape spread itself wooingly before him, but he saw nothing of its varied attractions.  Far away, fixing his inward gaze with the fascination of a serpent’s eye, was the grand result of his new enterprise, and all else was obscured by the brightness of a vortex toward which he was moving in swiftly-closing circles.  Already two-thirds of his handsome fortune was embarked in this new scheme, that was still growing in magnitude, and still, like the horse-leech, crying “Give! give!” All that now remained was “Woodbine Lodge,” valued at over twenty-five thousand dollars.  This property he determined to leave untouched.  But new calls for funds were constantly being made by Mr. Fenwick, backed by the most flattering reports from Mr. Lyon and his associates in Central America, and at last the question of selling or heavily mortgaging the “Lodge” had to be considered.  The latter alternative was adopted, and the sum of fifteen thousand dollars raised, and thrown, with a kind of desperation, into the whirlpool which had already swallowed up nearly the whole of his fortune.