ng his hand upon his servant's
shoulder, his voice unsteady with finality, "I have decided, after all,
to go to Paris! We will live there, Selim. Do you understand?" with
strange fierceness, a great exultation mastering him. "We are to live in
Paris!"

To himself, all that night, he was saying: "I _must_ see her again--I
_shall_ see her!"

A thousand times he had read and re-read the letter that Lady Deppingham
had written to him just before the ceremony in the cathedral at
Thorberg. He knew every word that it contained; he could read it in the
dark. She had said that Genevra was going into a hell that no hereafter
could surpass in horrors! And that was ages ago, it seemed to him.
Genevra had been a wife for nearly three months--the wife of a man she
loathed; she was calling in her heart for him to come to her; she was
suffering in that unspeakable hell. All this he had come to feel and
shudder over in his unspeakable loneliness. He would go to her! There
could be no wrong in loving her, in being near her, in standing by her
in those hours of desperation.

A copy of a London newspaper, stuffed away in the recesses of his trunk,
dated June 29th, had come to him by post. It contained the telegraphic
details of the brilliant wedding in Thorberg. He had read the names of
the guests over and over again with a bitterness that knew no bounds.
Those very names proved to him that her world was not his, nor ever
could be. Every royal family in Europe was represented; the list of
noble names seemed endless to him--the flower of the world's
aristocracy. How he hated them!

The next morning Selim aroused him from his fitful sleep, bringing the
news that a strange vessel had arrived off Aratat. Chase sprang out of
bed, possessed of the wild hope that the opportunity to leave the island
had come sooner than he had expected. He rushed out upon his veranda,
overlooking the little harbour.

A long, white, graceful craft was lying in the harbour. It was in so
close to the pier that he had no choice but to recognise it as a vessel
of light draft. He stared long and intently at the trim craft.

"Can I be dreaming?" he muttered, passing his hand over his eyes. "Don't
lie to me, Selim! Is it really there?" Then he uttered a loud cry of joy
and started off down the slope with the speed of a race horse, shouting
in the frenzy of an uncontrollable glee.

It was the Marquess of B----'s white and blue yacht!

* * *