s distress, and hurried through
the rest of his revelation, careless of the result he had sought.

"It may prove," said he, "a far more serious affair than the other. Lord
Rivercourt is not the man to sit quietly under an outrage like that."

Julius astonished him by demanding, "What is the outrage? Has the lady
given an account of it? What does she accuse the man of?"

"She has not spoken yet,--to me, at least," said Lefevre; "and I don't
know what the outrage can be called, but I am sure Lord Rivercourt--and
he is a man of immense influence--will move heaven and earth to give it
a legal name, and to get it punishment. There is a detective on the
man's track now."

"Oh!" said Julius. "Well, it will be time enough to discuss the
punishment when the man is caught. Now, if that is all your news," he
added hurriedly, "I think--" He took up his hat, and was as if going
to the door.

"It is not quite all," said the doctor, and Julius went back to the
window, with his hat in his hand.

"I wonder," he broke out, "if we shall ever be simple enough and
intelligent enough to perceive that real wickedness--the breaking of any
of the laws of Nature, I mean (or, if you prefer to say so, the laws of
God)--is best punished by being left to itself? Outraged nature exacts a
severe retribution! But you were going to say--?"

"The night before last," continued Lefevre, determined to be brief and
succinct, "I was walking in the Strand, and I could not help observing a
man who fulfilled completely the description given of the author of this
case and my former one."

"Well?"

"That is not all. When I caught sight of his face I was completely
amazed; for--I must tell you--it looked for all the world like you grown
old, or, as I said to myself at the time, like a death-mask of you."

"You--you saw that?" exclaimed Julius, leaning against the window with a
sudden look of terror which Lefevre was ashamed to have seen: it was
like catching a glimpse of Julius's poor naked soul. "And you
thought--?" continued Julius.

"You shall hear. Dr Rippon--you remember the old doctor?--had a sight of
a man in the Strand the night before, who, he believes, was his old
friend Courtney that he thought dead, and who, I believe, was the man I
saw."

Lefevre stopped. There was a pause, in which Julius put his head out of
the window, as if he had a mind to be gone that way. Then he turned with
a marked control upon himself.

"Really, Lefevre," said