t." His voice sank suddenly to a whisper, no
longer passionate, only inexpressibly evil. "Will you despise me then,
Queen Anne? I wonder!--I wonder!"

She moved at last, raised her hand, stiffly pointed. "Go!" she
said. "Go!"

Yet for a space he still stood in the doorway, menacing her, a vital
figure, lithe, erect, dominant. The tension was terrible. It seemed to be
strained to snapping point, and yet it held.

It was the fiercest battle she had ever known--a battle in which his will
grappled with hers in a mighty, all-mastering grip, increasing every
instant till she felt crushed, impotent, lost, as if all the powers of
evil were let loose and seething around her, dragging her down.

Her resolution began to falter at last. She became conscious of a numbing
sense of physical weakness, an oppression so overwhelming that she
thought her heart would never beat again. Once more she seemed to totter
on the edge of a depth too immense to contemplate, to hover above the
very pit of destruction...

And then suddenly the ordeal was over. A blinding flash of lightning lit
the room, glimmered weirdly, splitting the gloom as a sword rending a
curtain, and was gone. There came a sound like the snarl of a startled
animal, and the next instant a frightful crash of thunder.

Anne reeled back, dazed, stunned, utterly unnerved, and sank into a
chair.

When she came to herself she was alone.

CHAPTER XIII

AN APPEAL AND ITS ANSWER

A puff of rain-washed air wandered in through the wide-flung window, and
Lucas Errol turned his head languidly upon the pillow to feel it on his
face. He sighed as he moved, as if even that slight exertion cost him
some resolution. His eyes had a heavy, drugged look. They seemed more
deeply sunken than usual, but there was no sleep in them, only the utter
weariness that follows the sleep of morphia.

At the soft opening of the door a faint frown drew his forehead, but it
turned to a smile as Bertie came forward with cautious tread.

"That you, dear fellow? I am awake."

Bertie came to his side, his brown face full of concern. "Are you better,
old chap?"

"Yes, better, thanks. Only so dog-tired. Sit down. Have you brought
the budget?"

"There's nothing much to-day. Only that chap Cradock writing again for
instructions about the Arizona ranch, and a few Wall Street tips from
Marsh by cable. Say, Luke, I don't think Cradock is overweighted with
spunk, never have thought so. Guess that