d
professors of what they term occultism. Go and practise your arts
where you will, but remember what I have told you. Remember the
person's name which I have mentioned. Remember it, obey what I have
said, and you may fool the whole world. Forget it, and I am your
enemy. Understand that."

"And you," Saton answered with darkening face, "understand this from
me, Rochester. I do not for a moment admit your right to speak to me
in this fashion. I admit no obligation to you. We are simply man and
man in the world together, and the words which you have spoken have no
weight with me whatever."

"You defy me?" Rochester asked calmly.

"If you call that defiance, I do," Saton answered.

Rochester came a step further into the room.

"Listen, my young friend," he said. "You belong to the modern
condition of things, to the world which has become just a little
over-civilized. You may call me a boor, if you like, but I want you to
understand this. If I fail to unmask you by any other means, I shall
revert to the primeval way of deciding such differences as lie between
you and me, the differences which make for hate. I can wield a
horse-whip with the strongest man living, and I am in deadly earnest."

"The lady whose name you have mentioned," Saton said softly--"is she
also your ward? You are related to her, perhaps?"

"She is the woman I love," Rochester answered. "Our ways through life
may lie apart, or fate may bring them together. That is not your
business or your concern. When I tell you that she is the woman I
love, I mean you to understand that she is the woman whom I will
protect against all manner of evil, now and always. Remember that if
you disregard my warning, in the spirit or in the letter, so surely as
we two live you will repent it."

Saton crossed the room with noiseless footsteps. He leaned toward the
wall and touched an electric bell.

"Very well," he said. "You have come to deliver an ultimatum, and I
have received it. I understand perfectly what you will accept as an
act of war. There is nothing more to be said, I think?"

"Nothing," Rochester answered, turning to follow the servant whom
Saton's summons had brought to the door.

CHAPTER XIX

TROUBLE BREWING

Saton turned out of Bond Street, and climbed the stairs of a little
tea-shop with the depressed feeling of a man who is expiating an
offence which he bitterly repents. Violet was waiting for him at one
of the tables shut off from the