istening
for what he felt was sure as the death stroke of the headsman to his
doomed victim. Again she spoke.

"The steps approach--yet what is this? _They_ are no longer on the
threshold. I am alone--alone--yet what new power is mine! My brain
seems to dilate! Space can scarce confine me! All fear has gone! And
it is thus you would have me yield to your brutal force, your drunken,
degraded senses! Back, rash intruder, touch me not if you value life!"

Then, while still they gazed and listened, the beautiful figure rose
slowly from its nest of snowy furs; rose and stood in its wonderful,
indolent, voluptuous grace, upright before those dazed and awe-struck
eyes.

But a change came over the quiet beauty of the face. It seemed as if
some hidden flame had sprung to life and flashed and quivered in the
wide-opened eyes and convulsed features. They saw a shiver, such as
shakes the sea before the blast of the coming tempest, bend and sway the
perfect form...

Once, twice, her lips opened, but no words came. At last she seemed to
force the channels of speech, but the low sweet music of her voice was
harsh and jangled with passion.

"My answer? Take it, ravisher and murderer of innocence and youth!
Die! in your crimes--Die!"

She stretched out her arm. There came a hoarse cry, a crash, a heavy
fall. Julian Estcourt lay upon the floor, white and senseless as the
dead.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

EXPIATION.

A severe attack of her "suppressed" enemy, and a nervous headache, the
result of the shock of the previous evening, had driven Mrs Ray
Jefferson to the Turkish bath as early as ten o'clock the morning after
that strange exhibition of Clairvoyance.

She had the rooms all to herself, and as she leant back in her
comfortable chair and dabbled her pretty bare feet in warm water; she
reflected in a troubled and disjointed fashion over all that had
occurred since that eventful morning when the beautiful "mystery" had
appeared before her standing in that curtained archway, which indeed
looked a prosaic enough portal, and not by any means the sort of
threshold for the development of occult science, or psychical marvels.

"She's completely unsettled me," she murmured plaintively. "How I wish
I had never gone to her rooms last night. And that poor Colonel
Estcourt--I wonder if he'll ever recover--they say he's never moved nor
spoken since they took him away last night. I wonder what she really
meant, and if