y by means of that window, and
had had just about sufficient time to get there when I came rushing down
the stairs. You will remember, will you not, that I spoke of those two
things: the spot of black and smudge of green? You know now to what I
alluded."

"It is wonderful and--yes, it is horrible also!" she said with a faint
shudder. "What a day of horror this has been! I think the shadow of it
will weigh upon me forever."

"Not if I can help it," said Cleek very gently, very tenderly. "And I
count very, very much indeed, Miss Lorne, upon the possibility of making
you bless it before the whole twenty-four hours of it have been rounded
out. Don't you remember what I said to you about my hopes for the
clearing of all shadows from the path of Geoff Clavering and Lady
Katharine, about the theory of Loisette?"

"Loisette? That is the great French scientist, is it not? The first man
who actually did establish a standard rule for the training of the
memory and schools for the teaching of his system all over the world?"

"Yes, that is the man. His principle is somewhat akin to that of the
principle of homoeopathy. 'Like cures like,' says the homoeopathist.
'Like produces like,' says Loisette, 'and the similarity of events
acting upon the human mind may, by suggestion, produce similar results,'
Well, last night Lady Katharine Fordham went through an experience which
no living woman is ever likely to forget: the knowledge that hope of
happiness is over, and that the man she loves is lost to her beyond all
possible recall. This evening, in the ruin over there, she went through
an exactly similar experience, and after some few hours of hope, was
thrust rudely back into the absolute certainty that a barrier as high as
heaven itself had come between Geoff Clavering and her. I stake my
hopes upon that, Miss Lorne. I look for Loisette to be vindicated. I
look for last night to be repeated _in all particulars_, and I am so
hopeful of it that I have sent for Geoff Clavering to come here and be a
witness to it."

"Sent for Geoff Clavering to come here--here?"

"Yes. At twelve o'clock he will be waiting for me at the lodge gates;
and if all goes as I hope and believe that it will go--ah, well, it will
be a blessed time for him, for her, for you! As for myself--but that
doesn't matter. I shall have but one more thing to accomplish under the
roof of this house, and then if the trail leads elsewhere, I'll be off
to Malta as fast as ste