resign to you the woman I love?"

"No."

"Is it one of the conditions that I should commit some crime,--a crime
perhaps heinous as that of which I am accused?"

"No."

"With such reservations, I accept the conditions you may name, provided
I, in my turn, may demand one condition from yourself."

"Name it."

"I ask you to quit this town. I ask you, meanwhile, to cease your visits
to the house that holds the woman betrothed to me."

"I will cease those visits. And before many days are over, I will quit
this town."

"Now, then, say what you ask from me. I am prepared to concede it. And
not from fear for myself, but because I fear for the pure and innocent
being who is under the spell of your deadly fascination. This is your
power over me. You command me through my love for another. Speak."

"My conditions are simple. You will pledge yourself to desist from all
charges of insinuation against myself, of what nature soever. You will
not, when you meet me in the flesh, refer to what you have known of my
likeness in the Shadow. You will be invited to the house at which I may
be also a guest; you will come; you will meet and converse with me as
guest speaks with guest in the house of a host."

"Is that all?"

"It is all."

"Then I pledge you my faith; keep your own."

"Fear not; sleep secure in the certainty that you will soon be released
from these walls."

The Shadow waned and faded. Darkness settled back, and a sleep, profound
and calm, fell over me.

The next day Mr. Stanton again visited me. He had received that morning
a note from Mr. Margrave, stating that he had left L---- to pursue, in
person, an investigation which he had already commenced through another,
affecting the man who had given evidence against me, and that, if his
hope should prove well founded, he trusted to establish my innocence,
and convict the real murderer of Sir Philip Derval. In the research he
thus volunteered, he had asked for, and obtained, the assistance of the
policeman Waby, who, grateful to me for saving the life of his sister,
had expressed a strong desire to be employed in my service.

Meanwhile, my most cruel assailant was my old college friend, Richard
Strahan. For Jeeves had spread abroad Strahan's charge of purloining the
memoir which had been entrusted to me; and that accusation had done me
great injury in public opinion, because it seemed to give probability to
the only motive which ingenuity could ascribe to the