n who has hidden himself on my premises,
but I would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy."

"I shall follow him!" said Aquilina.

"Then follow him," returned Castanier.--"Here, Jenny----"

Jenny appeared.

"Tell the porter to hail a cab for them.--Here Naqui," said Castanier,
drawing a bundle of bank-notes from his pocket; "you shall not go away
like a pauper from a man who loves you still."

He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina took the notes,
flung them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in a
frenzy of despair.

"We will leave this house on foot," she cried, "without a farthing of
your money.--Jenny, stay where you are."

"Good-evening!" answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes again.
"I have come back from my journey.--Jenny," he added, looking at the
bewildered waiting-maid, "you seem to me to be a good sort of girl. You
have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have a master."

Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the
house of one of her friends. But all Leon's movements were suspiciously
watched by the police, and after a time he and three of his friends were
arrested. The whole story may be found in the newspapers of that day.

Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical
transformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed--the boy, the
young Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been
tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate
lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina's sake. His inmost nature
had suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had
developed. His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the
things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above the
world.

Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.
Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her infidelities;
and now all that blind passion had passed away as a cloud vanishes in
the sunlight.

Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress' position and fortune,
and did the cashier's will in all things; but Castanier, who could read
the inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive underlying
this purely physical devotion. He amused himself with her, however,
like a mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the cherry and
flings away the stone. The next morning at breakfa