morrhage. Within ten minutes' time your name, which he
cursed, was stricken from his will, and he left everything to me,
disinheriting you. Do you comprehend the force of my remark?"

The steady, awful look in the young girl's eyes made the woman quail in
spite of her bravado. "I--I do not care for my father's wealth, but that
he should curse me--oh, that is too much--too much. Oh, God, let me die
here and now, that I may follow him to the Great White Throne and there
kneel before him and tell him all my pitiful story!"

"That is a pretty theory, but people cannot go to and come at will from
the Great White Throne, as you call it. You had better get back to the
realities of life on this mundane sphere, where you find yourself just
at present. I repeat for the third time that you are disinherited. I
cannot seem to make you grasp that fact. This home and everything in it
belongs absolutely to me."

Faynie heard and realized, and without a word, turned and staggered like
one dying toward the door, but her stepmother put herself quickly before
her.

"Sit down there. I have something else to say to you," she added in a
shrill whisper, pushing the girl into the nearest seat.

"I must go. I will not listen," cried Faynie, struggling to her feet.

"Yes, you shall listen and comply with my proposition," exclaimed her
stepmother, her glittering eyes fastened on the beautiful face of the
girl she hated so intensely.

CHAPTER XII.

IMPENDING EVIL.

We must return for one brief instant, dear reader, to our hero, Lester
Armstrong, whom we left as he was being hurried off to the hospital on
the night which proved so thrillingly eventful.

At the first rapid glance, the surgeon had believed his patient dying,
but upon examination after he had reached the hospital, it was
discovered that his injury was by no means as serious as had been
apprehended; but a trouble quite as grave confronted the patient.

"An injury to the base of the brain, such as he has received, no matter
how slight, might, in this instance, produce either insanity or partial
loss of memory, which is almost as bad," said the surgeon. "It will
soon be determined when consciousness, returns to him."

This indeed proved to be the case. Just as daylight broke Lester
Armstrong opened his eyes, looking in amazement around the strange
apartment in which he found himself.

A kindly-faced nurse bent over him, who, in answer to his look of
inquiry, said: