have to speak a second time, Frank. Come and be introduced."

She took her father's arm, and moved on with him to the door of the
greenhouse. At the steps, she turned and looked round to see if Frank
was following her. It was only the action of a moment; but in
that moment her natural firmness of will rallied all its
resources--strengthened itself with the influence of her beauty
--commanded--and conquered. She looked lovely: the flush was tenderly
bright in her cheeks; the radiant pleasure shone and sparkled in her
eyes; the position of her figure, turned suddenly from the waist upward,
disclosed its delicate strength, its supple firmness, its seductive,
serpentine grace. "Come!" she said, with a coquettish beckoning action
of her head. "Come, Frank!"

Few men of forty would have resisted her at that moment. Frank was
twenty last birthday. In other words, he threw aside his cigar, and
followed her out of the greenhouse.

As he turned and closed the door--in the instant when he lost sight of
her--his disinclination to be associated with the private theatricals
revived. At the foot of the house-steps he stopped again; plucked a
twig from a plant near him; broke it in his hand; and looked about him
uneasily, on this side and on that. The path to the left led back to his
father's cottage--the way of escape lay open. Why not take it?

While he still hesitated, Mr. Vanstone and his daughter reached the
top of the steps. Once more, Magdalen looked round--looked with her
resistless beauty, with her all-conquering smile. She beckoned again;
and again he followed her--up the steps, and over the threshold. The
door closed on them.

So, with a trifling gesture of invitation on one side, with a trifling
act of compliance on the other: so--with no knowledge in his mind, with
no thought in hers, of the secret still hidden under the journey to
London--they took the way which led to that secret's discovery, through
many a darker winding that was yet to come.

CHAPTER V.

MR. VANSTONE'S inquiries into the proposed theatrical entertainment at
Evergreen Lodge were answered by a narrative of dramatic disasters; of
which Miss Marrable impersonated the innocent cause, and in which her
father and mother played the parts of chief victims.

Miss Marrable was that hardest of all born tyrants--an only child. She
had never granted a constitutional privilege to her oppressed father
and mother since the time when she cut her first tooth