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 abs