then a ship was
wrecked. My husband went out with the others; and from the terrace
before my windows I saw--ah, God! what did I not see? Then Edmond
returned and was angry with the servant who had permitted me to see. He
shot him in this room before my face. He knew that his secret was mine,
he knew that I would not share it. The leaves of the rose had fallen.
Ah! Jasper, what weeks of terror, of greed, of tears--and now you--you
in this house to end it all!"

I sat for a long while preoccupied with my own thoughts and quite
unable to speak to her. All that she had told me was no surprise, no
new thing; but I believe it brought home to me for the first time the
danger of my presence in that house, and all that discovery meant to
the four shipmates who waited for me down below in the cavern.

For if this man Czerny--a madman, as I always say--had shot down a
servant before this gentle girl, what would he do to me and the others,
sworn enemies of his, who could hang him in any city where they might
find him; who could, with one word, give his dastardly secret to the
world; who could, with a cry, destroy this treasure-house, rock-built
though it might be? What hope of mercy had we from such a man? And I
was sitting there, it might be, within twenty paces of the room in
which he slept; Miss Ruth's hand lay in my own. What hope for her or
for me, I ask again? Will you wonder that I said, "None; just none! A
thousand times none"! The island itself might well be a mercy beside
such a hell as this.

"Miss Ruth," said I, coming to myself at last, "how little I thought
when you went up to the great cathedral in Nice a short year ago that
such a sunny day would end so badly! It is one of the world's
lotteries; just that and nothing more. Edmond Czerny is no sane man,
as his acts prove. Some day you will blot it all out of your life as
a page torn and forgotten. That your husband loved you in Nice, I do
believe; and so much being true, he may come to reason again, and
reason would give you liberty. If not, there are others who will
try--while they live. He must be a rich man, a very rich man,
must Edmond Czerny. God alone knows why he should sink to such an
employment as this."

"He has sunk to it," she said, quickly, "because gold is fed by the
love of gold. Oh, yes, he is a rich man, richer than you and I can
understand. And yet even my own little fortune must be cast upon the
pile. A month ago he compelled me to sign a pap