ght have been, as everyone else was,
prepared for this. But he was not. For he knew that Claudia was
perfectly conscious of his own passionate love for her, and he knew that
she loved him with almost equal fervor. It is true his heart had been
often wrung with jealousy when seeing her with Lord Vincent; yet even
then he had thought that her vanity only was interested in receiving the
attentions of the viscount; and he had trusted in her honor that he
believed would never permit her, while loving himself, to marry another,
or even give that other serious encouragement. It is true also that he
had never breathed his love to Claudia, for he knew that to do so would
be an unpardonable abuse of his position in Judge Merlin's family, a
flagrant breach of confidence, and a fatal piece of presumption that
would insure his final banishment from Claudia's society. So he had
struggled to control his passion, seeing also that Claudia strove to
conquer hers. And though no words passed between them, each knew by
secret sympathy the state of the other's mind.

But lately, since his brilliant success at the bar and the glorious
prospect that opened before him, he had begun to hope that Claudia,
conscious of their mutual love, would wait for him only a few short
years, at the end of which he would be able to offer her a position not
unworthy even of Judge Merlin's daughter.

Such had been his splendid "castle in the air." But now the thunderbolt
had fallen and his castle was in ruins.

Claudia, whom he had believed to be, if not perfectly faultless, yet the
purest, noblest, and proudest among women; Claudia, his queen, had been
capable of selling herself to be the wife of an unloved man, for the
price of a title and a coronet--a breath and a bauble!

Claudia had struck a fatal blow, not only to his love for her, but to
his honor of her; and both love and honor were in their death-throes!

Anguish is no computer of time. He might have sat there half an hour or
half a day, he could not have told which, when he heard the voice of his
kind friend calling him.

"Ishmael, Ishmael, my lad, where are you, boy? Come to me!"

"Yes, yes, sir, I am coming," he answered mechanically.

And like one who has fainted from torture, and recovered in
bewilderment, he arose and walked down to the study.

Some blind instinct led him straight to the chair that was sitting with
its back to the window; into this he sank, with his face in the deep
shad