st" he said, hoarsely, "was in that train. He was killed.
It was in the papers."

"So the detective believed," she said, "but a daughter of the murdered
man--"

"Ah!"

"--Has taken up the case and positively refused to identify some of the
clothing belonging to the dead man. There was some talk of a young man,
who answered to the description of Douglas Guest, having forced himself
into my carriage. The man came to ask me about this."

"And you told him--what?"

She adjusted a bracelet carefully, her beautiful eyes fixed upon his
haggard face.

"I told him a lie," she answered. "I told him that my companion was a
fellow-guest at the house where I had been staying."

A little sob of relief broke in his throat. He seized her hand in his
and pressed it to his lips. It seemed to her that the touch was of
fire. She looked at him thoughtfully.

"You are Douglas Guest, then?" she asked, quietly.

"I am," he answered.

CHAPTER XVI

JOAN STRONG, AVENGER

At an attic window, from which stretched a Babylonic wilderness of
slated roofs and cowled chimney pots, two girls were sitting. The tan
of the wind and the sun was upon their cheeks, their clothes lacked the
cheap smartness of the Londoner. They were both in mourning for their
father, Gideon Strong.

"Suicide, nay! I'll never believe that it was Douglas," Joan declared
firmly. "Nay, but I know the lad too well. He was ever pining for
London, for gay places and the stir of life. There was evil in his
blood. It was the books he read, and the strange taste he had for
solitude. What else? But he'd not the pluck of a rabbit. He never
killed himself--not he! He's a living man to-day, and as I'm a living
woman I'll drop my hand upon his shoulder before long."

"God forbid it!" Cicely cried fervently. "Please God if it was Douglas
who sinned so grievously that he may be dead."

Joan rose slowly to her feet. In her sombre garb, fashioned with almost
pitiless severity, her likeness to her father became almost striking.
There were the same high cheek-bones, the heavy eyebrows, the mouth of
iron. The blood of many generations of stern yeomen was in her veins.

"'Tis well for you, Cicely," she said, and her voice, metallic enough at
all times, seemed, for the bitterness of it, to bite the close air like
a rasp. "'Tis well enough for you, Cicely, who had but little to do
with him, but do you forget that I was his affianced wife? I have stood
up in the Meeting House a