rl has a tremendous spirit in that slight frame
of hers. She has always seemed such a sweet little angel, too--no one
would have suspected it. However, there are more ways than one to
accomplish my purpose, and I flatter myself that I shall yet conquer
her."

With this comforting reflection, he sought his sister, to relate what
had occurred, and enlist her crafty talents in planning his next move
in the desperate game he was playing.

CHAPTER XX.

EDITH RESOLVES TO MEET HER ENEMIES WITH THEIR OWN WEAPONS.

The morning following her interview with Emil Correlli, when Edith
attempted to leave her room to go down to breakfast, she found, to her
dismay, that her door had been fastened on the outside.

An angry flush leaped to her brow.

"So they imagine they can make me bend to their will by making a
prisoner of me, do they?" she exclaimed, with flashing eyes and
scornful lips. "We shall see!"

But she was powerless just then to help herself, and so was obliged to
make the best of her situation for the present.

Presently some one knocked upon her door, and she heard a bolt
moved--it having been placed there during the night. Then Mrs. Goddard
appeared before her, smiling a gracious good-morning, and bearing a
tray, upon which there was a daintily arranged breakfast.

"We thought it best for you to eat here, since you do not feel like
coming down to the dining-room," she kindly remarked, as she set the
tray upon the table.

Edith opened her lips to make some scathing retort; but, a bright
thought suddenly flashing through her mind, she checked herself, and
replied, appreciatively:

"Thank you, Mrs. Goddard."

The woman turned a surprised look upon her, for she had expected only
tears and reproaches from her because of her imprisonment.

But Edith, without appearing to notice it, sat down and quietly
prepared to eat her breakfast.

"Ah! she is beginning to come around," thought the wily woman.

But, concealing her secret pleasure at this change in her victim, she
remarked, in her ordinary tone:

"We shall leave for the city very soon after breakfast, so please have
everything ready so as not to keep the horses standing in the cold."

"Everything is ready now," said Edith, glancing at her trunk, which
she had locked just before trying the door.

"That is well, and I will send for you when the carriage comes
around."

Edith simply bowed to show that she heard, and then her companion
retired, l