ugh I am not so beautiful"--

"Don't talk nonsense, or I shall call you 'Your Ladyship' for the
rest of the day. Yes, of course we are alike, since our mothers were
twin-sisters, and the very image of each other, according to their
portraits."

While the girls were talking of their new-found relationship, Arnold
had dropped behind to wait for Tremayne, who, after he had taken Lord
Marazion into the saloon of the _Ithuriel_, had left him with Natas
and returned to the Castle alone.

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE STORY OF THE MASTER.

That evening, when the lamps were lit and the curtains drawn in the
library at Alanmere, in the same room in which Tremayne had seen the
Vision of Armageddon, Natas told the story of Israel di Murska, the
Jewish Hungarian merchant, and of Sylvia Penarth, the beautiful
English wife whom he had loved better than his own faith and people,
and how she had been taken from him to suffer a fate which had now
been avenged as no human wrongs had ever been before.

"Twenty-five years ago," he began, gazing dreamily into the great
fire of pine-logs, round the hearth of which he and his listeners
were sitting, "I, who am now an almost helpless, half-mutilated
cripple, was a strong, active man, in the early vigour of manhood,
rich, respected, happy, and prosperous even beyond the average of
earthly good fortune.

"I was a merchant in London, and I had inherited a large fortune from
my father, which I had more than doubled by successful trading. I was
married to an English wife, a woman whose grace and beauty are
faithfully reflected in her daughter"--

As Natas said this, the fierce light that had begun to shine in his
eyes softened, and the hard ring left his voice, and for a little
space he spoke in gentler tones, until sterner memories came and
hardened them again.

"I will not deny that I bought her with my gold and fair promises of
a life of ease and luxury. But that is done every day in the world in
which I then lived, and I only did as my Christian neighbours about
me did. Yet I loved my beautiful Christian wife very dearly,--more
dearly even than my people and my ancient faith,--or I should not
have married her.

"When Natasha was two years old the black pall of desolation fell
suddenly on our lives, and blasted our great happiness with a misery
so utter and complete that we, who were wont to count ourselves among
the fortunate ones of the earth, were cast down so low that the
beggar