tten detailing the remarkable
and almost inconceivable machinations of those who have stained their
hands with crime, but I honestly believe that the extraordinary
features of my own life-romance are as strange as, if not stranger
than, any hitherto recorded. Even my worst enemy could not dub me
egotistical, I think; and surely the facts I have set down here are
plain and unvarnished, without any attempt at misleading the reader
into believing that which is untrue. Mine is a plain chronicle of a
chain of extraordinary circumstances which led to an amazing
denouement.

From King's Cross to Guy's is a considerable distance, and when I
alighted from the cab in the courtyard of the hospital it was nearly
mid-day. Until two o'clock I was kept busy in the wards, and after a
sandwich and a glass of sherry I drove to Harley Street, where I found
Sir Bernard in his consulting-room for the first time for a month.

"Ah! Boyd," he cried merrily, when I entered. "Thought I'd surprise
you to-day. I felt quite well this morning, so resolved to come up and
see Lady Twickenham and one or two others. I'm not at home to
patients, and have left them to you."

"Delighted to see you better," I declared, wringing his hand. "They
were asking after you at the hospital to-day. Vernon said he intended
going down to see you to-morrow."

"Kind of him," the old man laughed, placing his thin hands together,
after rubbing and readjusting his glasses. "You were away last night;
out of town, they said."

"Yes, I wanted a breath of fresh air," I answered, laughing. I did not
care to tell him where I had been, knowing that he held my love for
Ethelwynn as the possible ruin of my career.

His curiosity seemed aroused; but, although he put to me an ingenious
question, I steadfastly refused to satisfy him. I recollected too well
his open condemnation of my love on previous occasions. Now that the
"murdered" man was proved to be still alive, I surely had no further
grounds for my suspicion of Ethelwynn. That she had, by her silence,
deceived me regarding her engagement to Mr. Courtenay was plain, but
the theory that it was her hand that had assassinated him was
certainly disproved. Thus, although the discovery of the "dead" man's
continued existence deepened the mystery a thousandfold, it
nevertheless dispelled from my heart a good deal of the suspicion
regarding my well-beloved; and, in consequence, I was not desirous
that any further hostile word sh