s; at length he said abruptly, "And
you really loved her, Vargrave,--you love her still? Your dearest care
must be her welfare."

"It is! indeed, it is!"

"Then I must trust to your discretion; I can have no other confidant;
I myself am not fit to judge. My mind is darkened--you may be right--I
think so."

"One word more,--she may discredit my tale, if unsupported. Will you
write one line to me to say that I am authorized to reveal the secret,
and that it is known only to me? I will not use it unless I should think
it absolutely required."

Hastily and mechanically Maltravers wrote a few words to the effect of
what Lumley had suggested. "I will inform you," he said to Vargrave as
he gave him the paper, "of whatever spot may become my asylum; and you
can communicate to me all that I dread and long to hear; but let no man
know the refuge of despair!"

There was positively a tear in Vargrave's cold eye,--the only tear that
had glistened there for many years; he paused irresolute, then advanced,
again halted, muttered to himself, and turned aside.

"As for the world," Lumley resumed, after a pause, "your engagement has
been public,--some public account of its breach must be invented. You
have always been considered a proud man; we will say that it was
low birth on the side of both mother and father (the last only just
discovered) that broke off the alliance!"

Vargrave was talking to the deaf; what cared Maltravers for the world?
He hastened from the room, threw himself into his carriage, and Vargrave
was left to plot, to hope, and to aspire.

BOOK X.

"A dream!"--HOMER, I, 3.

CHAPTER I.

QUALIS ubi in lucem coluber
... Mala gramina pastus.*--VIRGIL.

Pars minima est ipsa puella sui.**--OVID.

* "As when a snake glides into light, having fed on pernicious
pastures."

** "The girl is the least part of himself."

IT would be superfluous, and, perhaps, a sickening task, to detail at
length the mode and manner in which Vargrave coiled his snares round the
unfortunate girl whom his destiny had marked out for his prey. He was
right in foreseeing that, after the first amazement caused by the
letter of Maltravers, Evelyn would feel resentment crushed beneath her
certainty of his affection her incredulity at his self-accusations,
and her secret conviction that some reverse, some misfortune he was
unwilling she should share, was the occasion of his farewell and flight.
Vargrave therefore