ay to
you, in all sincerity, that not alone do I refuse you all concurrence in
the act you meditate, but I hold myself open to denounce and frustrate
it."

"You do!" cried Glencore, wildly, while with a bound he sat up in his
bed, grasping the curtain convulsively for support.

"Be calm, Glencore, and listen to me patiently."

"You declare that you will use the confidence of this morning against
me!" cried Glencore, while the lines in his face became indented more
deeply, and his bloodless lips quivered with passion. "You take your
part with _her!_"

"I only ask that you would hear me."

"You owe me four thousand five hundred pounds, Sir Horace Upton,"
said Glencore, in a voice barely above a whisper, but every accent of
which was audible.

"I know it, Glencore," said Upton, calmly. "You helped me by a loan of
that sum in a moment of great difficulty. Your generosity went farther,
for you took, what nobody else would, my personal security."

Glencore made no reply, but, throwing back the bedclothes, slowly and
painfully arose, and with tottering and uncertain steps approached a
table. With a trembling hand he unlocked a drawer, and taking out a
paper, opened and scanned it over.

"There's your bond, sir," said he, with a hollow, cavernous voice, as
he threw it into the fire, and crushed it down into the flames with a
poker. "There is now nothing between us. You are free to do your worst!"
And as he spoke, a few drops of dark blood trickled from his nostril,
and he fell senseless upon the floor.

CHAPTER XI. SOME LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF DIPLOMATIC LIFE

There is a trait in the lives of great diplomatists of which it is just
possible some one or other of my readers may not have heard, which is,
that none of them have ever attained to any great eminence without an
attachment--we can find no better word for it--to some woman of superior
understanding who has united within herself great talents for society
with a high and soaring ambition.

They who only recognize in the world of politics the dry details of
ordinary parliamentary business, poor-law questions, sanitary rules,
railroad bills, and colonial grants can form but a scanty notion of the
excitement derived from the high interests of party, and the great game
played by about twenty mighty gamblers, with the whole world for the
table, and kingdoms for counters. In this "grand role" women perform no
ignoble part; nay, it were not too much to say that the