h I found therein.

Suddenly an exclamation of triumph escaped my lips.

I held a packet in my hand on which was written in a clear hand: "The
papers of Mlle. Estelle Bachelier." A brief examination of the packet
sufficed. It consisted of a number of letters written in English,
which language I only partially understand, but they all bore the same
signature, "John Pike and Sons, solicitors," and the address was at
the top, "168 Cornhill, London." It also contained my Estelle's birth
certificate, her mother's marriage certificate, and her police
registration card.

I was rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus
brilliantly attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room
roused me from my trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful
risks which I was running at this moment. I turned like an animal at
bay to see Estelle's beautiful face peeping at me through the
half-open door.

"Hist!" she whispered. "Have you got the papers?"

I waved the packet triumphantly. She, excited and adorable, stepped
briskly into the room.

"Let me see," she murmured excitedly.

But I, emboldened by success, cried gaily:

"Not till I have received compensation for all that I have done and
endured."

"Compensation?"

"In the shape of a kiss."

Oh! I won't say that she threw herself in my arms then and there. No,
no! She demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the
circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting
and coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers
from me and, with a woman's natural curiosity, had turned the English
letters over and over, even though she could not read a word of them.

Then, Sir, in the midst of her innocent frolic and at the very moment
when I was on the point of snatching the kiss which she had so
tantalizingly denied me, we heard the opening and closing of the front
door.

Mr. Farewell had come home, and there was no other egress from the
study save the sitting-room, which in its turn had no other egress but
the door leading into the very passage where even now Mr. Farewell was
standing, hanging up his hat and cloak on the rack.

4.

We stood hand in hand--Estelle and I--fronting the door through which
Mr. Farewell would presently appear.

"To-night we fly together," I declared.

"Where to?" she whispered.

"Can you go to the woman at your former lodgings?"

"Yes!"

"Then I will take you there to-n