fight me," Robert sighed. "Hey, Lord!
it's a heavy world when we come to methods. But will you, Percy, will you
put it to him at the end of your fist--'Did you deceive the girl, and do
you know where the girl now is?' Why, great heaven! we only ask to know
where she is. She may have been murdered. She's hidden from her family.
Let him confess, and let him go."

Major Waring shook his head. "You see like a woman perhaps, Robert. You
certainly talk like a woman. I will state your suspicions. When I have
done so, I am bound to accept his reply. If we discover it to have been
false, I have my remedy."

"Won't you perceive, that it isn't my object to punish him by and by, but
to tear the secret out of him on the spot--now--instantly," Robert cried.

"I perceive your object, and you have experienced some of the results of
your system. It's the primitive action of an appeal to the god of
combats, that is exploded in these days. You have no course but to take
his word."

"She said"--Robert struck his knee--"she said I should have the girl's
address. She said she would see her. She pledged that to me. I'm speaking
of the lady up at Fairly. Come! things get clearer. If she knows where
Dahlia is, who told her? This Mr. Algernon--not Edward Blancove--was seen
with Dahlia in a box at the Playhouse. He was there with Dahlia, yet I
don't think him the guilty man. There's a finger of light upon that
other."

"Who is this lady?" Major Waring asked, with lifted eyebrows.

"Mrs. Lovell."

At the name, Major Waring sat stricken.

"Lovell!" he repeated, under his breath. "Lovell! Was she ever in India?"

"I don't know, indeed."

"Is she a widow?"

"Ay; that I've heard."

"Describe her."

Robert entered upon the task with a dozen headlong exclamations, and very
justly concluded by saying that he could give no idea of her; but his
friend apparently had gleaned sufficient.

Major Waring's face was touched by a strange pallor, and his smile had
vanished. He ran his fingers through his hair, clutching it in a knot, as
he sat eyeing the red chasm in the fire, where the light of old days and
wild memories hangs as in a crumbling world.

Robert was aware of there being a sadness in Percy's life, and that he
had loved a woman and awakened from his passion. Her name was unknown to
him. In that matter, his natural delicacy and his deference to Percy had
always checked him from sounding the subject closely. He might be, as he
had sa