ened every moment, he hastened to fetch a
priest.

In the street he came upon the Benedictine, talking to Walter Dixon, and
bidding him follow, led him to the bedside of Lady Eleanor, and left him
alone with the dying woman.

Bending over her, the monk solemnly asked her if she had anything on her
mind which she wished to confess.

He pressed a cup to her lips; and in a slow, gasping voice she laid bare
the story of her life, and then went on to relate her feelings at her
first meeting with Frank Masterton.

"When we parted, and I thought of the man to whom I was bound for life,
what fearful feelings came across my bosom! Sir Andrew Fleming my
husband! Was it possible? I called to remembrance his look, his
harshness, his jealousy, and, oh, God! oh, God! how I did hate that
man!"

"Woman, woman!" exclaimed the monk, rising up from his seat, and casting
back the cowl from his head, "Oh, God! oh, God! how I did love you!"

Lady Eleanor's eyes fixed full upon his face. Before her stood, in the
garb of a Benedictine monk, Sir Andrew Fleming, her husband. For a
second she looked at him imploringly; then, with fearful strength, she
rose from her recumbent position, and clasping her hands as if in the
act of prayer, sank down upon her knees at his feet. A low moan escaped
from her lips. She fell forward on the ground, and the spirit departed
for ever from its clay.

The monk grasped his forehead with his hand, gazing at her with mingled
feelings of love, anger, sorrow, and despair; then, raising the body in
his arms, he placed it on the couch, and bending over it, three times
printed a long kiss upon the pale lips. Then, with his right hand thrust
into his robe, he rushed out of the room.

Outside in the hall there came towards him Lord Masterton, General
Dixon, and Henry. A look of deadly, concentrated hate came into Sir
Andrew Fleming's eyes. For a moment he paused; then, drawing a dagger
from his bosom, he flung himself on Lord Masterton, and, with one blow,
stretched him dead at his feet.

"Villain!" cried Walter Dixon. "Atrocious villain!"

With the rapidity of lightning he drew his sword, and at once passed it
through the body of the assassin.

To Walter Dixon, this scene of carnage, which he had planned with
elaborate care, seemed to ensure his long delayed possession of the
Penford-bourne estates. Lady Eleanor was dead; her husband, Sir Andrew
had fallen by his hand, and there were no lives now between him