rth can keep my spirit down when John Poindexter feels his
doom. I shall be conscious of his anguish and shall rejoice; and when in
the depths of darkness to which I go he comes faltering along my way----

"Boy, boy, you have been reared for this. God made you handsome; man has
made you strong; you have made yourself intelligent and accomplished.
You have only to show yourself to this country girl to become the master
of her will and affection, and these once yours, remember _me_!
_Remember Evelyn!_"

Never had Thomas been witness to such passion. It swept him along in a
burning stream against which he sought to contend and could not. Raising
his hand in what he meant as a response to that appeal, he endeavored to
speak, but failed. His father misinterpreted his silence, and bitterly
cried:

"You are dumb! You do not like the task; are virtuous, perhaps--you who
have lived for years alone and unhampered in Paris. Or you have
instincts of honor, habits of generosity that blind you to wrongs that
for a longer space than your lifetime have cried aloud to heaven for
vengeance. Thomas, Thomas, if you should fail me now----"

"He will not fail you," broke in the voice of Felix, calm, suave, and
insinuating. "I have watched him; I know him; he will not fail you."

Thomas shuddered; he had forgotten Felix, but as he heard these words he
could no longer delay looking at the man who had offered to stand his
surety for the performance of the unholy deed his father exacted from
him. Turning, he saw a man who in any place and under any roof would
attract attention, awake admiration and--yes, fear. He was not a large
man, not so large as himself, but the will that expressed itself in
frenzy on his father's lips showed quiet and inflexible in the gray eye
resting upon his own with a power he could never hope to evade. As he
looked and comprehended, a steel band seemed to compress his heart; yet
he was conscious at the same time that the personality before which he
thus succumbed was as elegant as his own and as perfectly trained in all
the ways of men and of life. Even the air of poverty which had shocked
him in his father's person and surroundings was not visible here. Felix
was both well and handsomely clad, and could hold his own as the elder
brother in every respect most insisted upon by the Parisian gentleman.
The long and, to Thomas, mysterious curtain of dark-green serge which
stretched behind him from floor to ceiling thre