he delicious breeze and the picturesque
panorama that lay beneath my feet, and the motley groups that swarmed to
early prayers up the Cathedral steps.

'At last, I felt like strengthening the inner man, and determined to
step down as far as Veroley's, the fashionable cafe of the city, and
there to take a right good breakfast. I returned to my room to replenish
my purse, and to take my dagger and revolver. I found the purse and
revolver on the shelf where I had left them, untouched, but my search
for the dagger proved fruitless. Yet with it I had wrenched out the
staples that fastened the door, and to my knowledge no one had had
access to my room since that time, save Adele.

'After taking my breakfast, and calling for my letters, I paid one or
two visits, and ere I returned home, it was well nigh three in the
afternoon.

'I had not been seated long, ere Mr. Livermore entered. He appeared to
have completely recovered from his attack.

''Of two evils, the adage advises us to choose the lesser. I would,
therefore, prefer to appear intrusive rather than ungrateful; so excuse
me if I trespass on your time or your patience. After the generous
devotion you displayed last night, and after what Adele moreover has
told me, I feel I am bound to inform you whom you have thus befriended;
for, as you have already learned, Albert Pride is not my real name.'

'I hastened to offer to my neighbor the seat of honor, my magnificent
rocking-chair, not only as a mark of politeness, but thinking that as he
was about to tell me something, if he were only comfortably ensconced,
very interesting, he might find himself so much at his ease that he
would make a much cleaner breast of it.

'My little surmise proved correct; he accepted my proffered civility,
and proceeded to give me a long and very interesting account of his
parentage and youth. Suffice it to say, that he was a native of
Tennessee, and being left an orphan at an early age, had, like thousands
of others, passed through a brief career of folly and extravagance. He
had become acquainted with Adele and her family some two years
previously, and had been married to her about four months, under the
impression, as he had told her husband on the previous night, that a
divorce had been obtained.

'What most excited my surprise, in his recital, was, that while Percival
had accused her of having deserted him because she deemed him ruined,
Arthur told me that she married him, knowing him