s over his chest to crush back the heavy sigh struggling
for escape. The long overcoat buttoned from throat to knee, enhanced
his height, and upon his stern, handsome features had settled an
expression of sorrowful perplexity; while his keen eyes showed the
feverish restlessness that, despite his efforts, betrayed heartache.
Above the heads of the gay throng he had just left, he had seen all
that evening a slender white hand beckoning to him from the bars of a
dungeon; and dominating the music of the ball room, the laughter of its
dancers, had risen the desperate, accusing cry:

"You have ruined my life!"

Was it true, that his hand had dashed a foul blot of shame upon the
fall pure page of a girl's existence, and written there the fatal
finis? If she died, could he escape the moral responsibility of having
been her murderer? Amid the ebb and flow of conflicting emotions, one
grim fact stared at him with sardonic significance. If he had ruined
her life, retribution promptly exacted a costly forfeit; and his
happiness was destined to share her grave.

He neither analyzed nor understood the nature of the strange
fascination which he had ineffectually striven to resist; and he ground
his teeth, and clinched his hands with impotent rage, under the
stinging and humiliating consciousness that his unfortunate victim had
grappled his heart to hers, and would hold it forever in bondage. No
other woman had ever stirred the latent and unsuspected depths of his
tenderness; but at the touch of her hand, the flood burst forth,
sweeping aside every barrier of selfish interest, defying the ramparts
of worldly pride. Guilty or innocent, he loved her; and the
wretchedness he had inflicted, was recoiling swiftly upon himself.

Unbuttoning his overcoat, he took from an inside pocket, the torn half
of a large envelope, and unlocking the drawer of his desk, hunted for a
similar fragment. Spreading them out before him, he fitted the zigzag
edges with great nicety, and there lay the well-known superscription:
"Last Will and Testament of Robert Luke Darrington." One corner of the
last found bit was brown and mud-stained, but the handwriting was in
perfect preservation. As he stooped to put it all back in a secret
drawer, something fell on the floor. He picked up the dainty
boutonniere of pale sweet violets, and looked at it, while a frown
darkened his countenance, as though he recognized some plenipotentiary
pleading for fealty to a sacred