ood cause. By the way, you'd better have a look, and see if the
girl's all right before I cover you over."

"Oh, damn the girl!" answered the woman. "What's it matter if she dies?"

"If I'd wanted that, I'd have left her dead in her lover's study."

"Lover! Old Bellamy!" said the woman--and laughed.

"Not old enough, I guess, to help it."

"Nor you, Alban, to hide it," she retorted, groping at the rug which
covered Amaryllis. "You gave her enough to keep her quiet another hour
or two, didn't you?"

"It's hard to tell with a new subject," he answered. "Morphine is tricky
in opiate doses."

Then Amaryllis knew she had been drugged, and to appear as when they
last saw her, she half-opened her eyes, showed her teeth between drawn
lips, and managed to keep her face rigid without even the quiver of an
eyelid.

The rug was lifted for a moment and a face peered at hers; and she knew
it for that of Sir Randal's late parlour-maid and lamented coffee-maker.

"She's just the same," said the woman. "Quite insensible, but not dead
yet. Blast her!"

Melchard laughed. "The green-eyed monster as per usual," he said. "You
ought to know me by this time, but you always mistake my universal
admiration of beauty for the tender passion."

"Don't be a fool," she answered. "What are you going to do with her?"

Melchard was silent, and the woman spoke again.

"Look here," she said, "I'm going to be right in this. I found the
stuff for you. I got the key. And if I hadn't been with you to-night
you'd have been lagged. I'm not so sure that you won't be, now, with
that ---- letter of yours from Paris."

"What's wrong with the letter?" asked Melchard.

"It would have done well enough if we hadn't had to bring this
red-haired wench of yours with us. Now that the girl's disappeared,
it'll only attract attention."

"My sweet child," retorted Melchard, "that letter is a masterpiece. I
did leave a notebook behind. Legarde and Morneaux, besides swearing to
it themselves, would bring a dozen others, all most respectable men, to
say that I did not leave Paris until the twenty-second, the day after
to-morrow."

"H'm!" said the woman. "M'yes, perhaps. And anyhow," she went on, with a
chuckle of relish, "by the time we've shipped the girl to Holland, she
won't remember her own name."

Then at last horror seized the soul of Amaryllis, and consciousness left
her.

CHAPTER IX.

THE POLITICAL COVES.

For the better part of their