electric
lamps suddenly glowed around the room. He leaned forward and looked
intently into the face of the girl who had become his accuser. She met
his gaze coldly, without flinching, the pallor of her cheeks relieved by
a single spot of burning colour, her eyes bright with purpose.

"It is incredible," he said, softly, "but it is true. You are the
untidy little thing with a pigtail who used always to be playing games
with the boys when you ought to have been at school. Come, I am glad to
see you. Why do you come to me like a Cassandra of the Family Herald?
Your father was my companion for a while, but we were never intimate. I
certainly neither robbed nor murdered him."

"You did both," she answered, fiercely. "You were his evil genius from
the first. It was through you he took to drink, through you he became a
gambler. You encouraged him to play for stakes larger than he could
afford. You won money from him which you knew was not his to lose. He
came to you for help. You laughed at him. That night he shot himself."

"It was," Lord Arranmore remarked, "a very foolish thing to do."

"Who or what you were before you came to Montreal I do not know," she
continued, "but there you brought misery and ruin upon every one
connected with you. I was a child in those days, but I remember how you
were hated. You broke the heart of Durran Lapage, an honest man whom
you called your friend, and you left his wife to starve in a common
lodging house. There was never a man or woman who showed you kindness
that did not live to regret it. You may be the Marquis of Arranmore
now, but you have left a life behind the memory of which should be a
constant torture to you."

"Have you finished, young lady?" he asked, coldly.

"Yes, I have finished," she answered. "I pray Heaven that the next time
we meet may be in the police-court. The police of Montreal are still
looking for Philip Ferringshaw, and they will find in me a very ready
witness."

"Upon my word, this is a most unpleasant young person," Lord Arranmore
said. "Brooks, do see her off the premises before she changes her mind
and comes for me again. You have, I hope, been entertained, ladies," he
added, turning to Sybil and Lady Caroom.

He eyed them carelessly enough to all appearance, yet with an inward
searchingness which seemed to find what it feared. He turned to Brooks,
but he and Mary Scott had left the room together.

"The girl-was terribly in earnest," Lady Caroom said