e money, then inform against him. No you don't! not
this time. I am off to the Containing with this L10,000, and I can get
to Newhaven in time for the midday boat, so you'll have to keep quiet
until I am the other side of the Channel, my friend. You won't be much
inconvenienced; my landlady will hear your groans presently and release
you, so you'll be all right. There, now, drink this--that's better.' He
forced something bitter down my throat, then I remember nothing more.

"'"When I regained consciousness I was sitting in an arm-chair with some
rope tied round me and a wool shawl round my mouth. I hadn't the
strength to make the slightest effort to disentangle myself or to utter
a scream. I felt terribly sick and faint."'

"Mr. Reginald Pepys had finished reading, and no one in that crowded
court had thought of uttering a sound; the magistrate's eyes were fixed
upon the handsome lady in the magnificent gown, who was mopping her eyes
with a dainty lace handkerchief.

"The extraordinary narrative of the victim of so daring an outrage had
kept every one in suspense; one thing was still expected to make the
measure of sensation as full as it had ever been over any criminal case,
and that was Mrs. Morton's evidence. She was called by the prosecuting
counsel, and slowly, gracefully, she entered the witness-box. There was
no doubt that she had felt keenly the tortures which her husband had
undergone, and also the humiliation of seeing her name dragged forcibly
into this ugly, blackmailing scandal.

"Closely questioned by Mr. Reginald Pepys, she was forced to admit that
the man who blackmailed her was connected with her early life in a way
which would have brought terrible disgrace upon her and upon her
children. The story she told, amidst many tears and sobs, and much use
of her beautiful lace handkerchief and beringed hands, was exceedingly
pathetic.

"It appears that when she was barely seventeen she was inveigled into a
secret marriage with one of those foreign adventurers who swarm in every
country, and who styled himself Comte Armand de la Tremouille. He seems
to have been a blackguard of unusually low pattern, for, after he had
extracted from her some L200 of her pin money and a few diamond
brooches, he left her one fine day with a laconic word to say that he
was sailing for Europe by the _Argentina_, and would not be back for
some time. She was in love with the brute, poor young soul, for when, a
week later, she r