A DOUBLE LIFE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9142, 25 August 1888, Page 3 (Supplement)

A DOUBLE LIFE.

BY HELEN CRAMPTON BALE. CHAPTER XXVII.— (Continued.) "dakkly BORN, Oil, DEVIL'S thought!" With a calm, slow step the blonde colonel went down the wing passage and turned in the direction of the suite assigned him, and as he neared the main corridor he could hear a voice saying : " No, don't put the lights out yet, Hopkins, and don't retire for a time. Herrick has gone to the hotel for the guests' luggage, and will return soon with that and with mademoiselle's maid. Meester Dane wishes the trunks carried up, so that they might be ready for the hand of Colonel Vallory and his daughtair the vair ferst. thing in the morning." It was the voice of madame—the husky madame this time ; and as he crossed the corridor, Colonel Vallory caught sight of the white face and spectacled eyes he had seen once already to-night coming slowly up the staircase at the extreme end of the passage ; and walking straight forward, he turned toward the door of his apartments. She had heard his footsteps, and glanced up. It was shadowy and dim at the end of the passage where he stood ; but as he reached the door and laid his hand upon the knob :

" Good-night, madame," he said, goodnight, and a thousand thanks for your kindness to my daughter !" At the sound of his voice the advancing figure came to a dead halt with a sudden shock ; then be opened the door ; the light blazed full upon him for one second ; the next there was a cry, half scream, half gasp, and as he stopped on the threshold and looked up, madame went reeling by him with a dizzy speed, and disappeared in the darkness of the turret staircase.

"Hello ! what comes over that respectable old party, I wonder?" muttered the blonde colonel, with sort of laugh. "A shingle loose there, I'm afraid, and I thought her such a nice, quiet, sensible old body this evening. If I hadn't met her and talked with her before, I should have thought my appearance was a sort of shook to— The devil ! it can't be possible that she recognised anything about me, can it? If this is Neil Dane's house, that old party must be Madame Benvarde, who used to bring me messages from Rose while she was at Darkendale. Is it—can it be possible that she— Pshaw ! my imagination is running away with me. I cut off my beard as soon as I began to live at the Baymouth Tavern, and she never saw me with one— never saw me anyhow, except in the dusk and with a slouch hat half over my face— and she couldn't possibly know enough of me to recognise me after all these years from the fleeting glimpses she got in those days. Besides, she stood and talked to me in the earlier part of this night, and she'd recognised me then if ever. These old women are nothing more than bundles of nerves anyway, and I dare say she has just had a tweak of rheumatism or a twinge of neuralgia, and h-trf rushed upstairs for her pet linament or her favourite pills. Dane was telling me only to-night that she suffered from some remarkable malady which acted queerly upon her, and I suppose this is one of her spells." And dismissing the subject from his mind, the blonde colonel walked into his room and closed the door behind him.

A decanter of Burgundy and a box of cigars had been placed upon the table ready for his use, and slippers and dressing-gown lay close by. He appropriated the latter at once, swallowed a glass of Burgundy, lighted a cigar, and drawing an easy-chair up to the open window, sunk lazily into it, and surveyed his surroundings. The suite comprised three rooms, the bedchamber, the wardrobe-room, and the apartment where he sat, the walls of which were hung with embossed leathera vine of silver leaves and scarlet berries upon a dark green groundthe ceiling was red oak, with panels of the embossed leather ; the great brazen fireplace, where stooks and chubby littlegods chased each other through a forest of hammered brass, towering up until it touched the carving at the top of the wall; rugs were scattered over the red oak floor, the tall windows were shrouded in dark green velvet, there were easels with pictures, pedestals with choice bits in bronze and bisque and white Carrara marble, and on each side of the glittering fireplace a brass Mercury upheld a branch of wax lights. "A monument to the colossal extravagance of the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Dynnelley, which it takes a fabulous fortune to support!" muttered the blonde colonel, serenely, eyeing the lavish splendour of his surroundings. " There were four or five millions in the Tressylian fortune to my certain knowledge, and yet they used to say at Baymouth that Dane was the richest man in the country. A clear evidence of ten millions, at least, and in a week's time he will be in love with her as much as ever. Hu-m-m-m !

Now, just let me- see how the affair stands. She will leave the stage as soon as she is of agethat's as fixed as fate—l shall have the income of eighteen performances, and at the rate I am living that would keep me just about as many months, so that in a year and a half I should have either to go back to the green cloth for a living, or get none at all. Hu-m-m-m ! that side of the question I don't like. Now for the other. Here are ten millions of money, a superb house, a big, soft-hearted noodle who would open his doors to me, and keep me on the fat of the land to the end of my days, and who could be bled as prettily as you wish, to say nothing of what, I could squeeze out of him by sundry little games of cards, etc., and get from her, out of the dowry he is bound to settle upon her for pin money, etc. This side of the question I do like ! And what stands in the path between me and it? Simply a woman—a weak, consumptive womanliable to die in a month's time, with nothing suspicious in the circumstance. Let me see ! It would need to be

very gradual—say, a few drops ot digitalis or arsenic each day. In her state, that would work a gentle and natural decay, and no one a whit the wiser. liu-m-m-m ! I think I shall have to scrape acquaintance with the Oakhurst cook !" CHAPTER XXVIII. AFTER MIDNIGHT. It was striking two when Colonel Vallory extinguished the lights in his apartment and crept into bed to perfect his plan of action in carrying out the cowardly crime ho had determined upon, and despite the popular belief that the couch of sin is a bed of torture, before the hall clock chimed the next half hour, the blonde colonel was sleeping as peacefully and dreamlessly as an innocent child.

He had fully made up his mind what to do and how to do it before he closed his eyes and slipped off to " the beautiful Land of Nod," but for all that, his path might not have seemed so very clear, nor his slumbers have been quite so serene could he but have known what had been going on under the roof of Oakhurst from the very moment Madame Benvarde uttered that startled cry and rushed past him to the turret staircase. " A nervous turn—a fit of hysterics— something of that sort," was the conclusion he had arrived at regarding the cause of madame's remarkable behaviour; but nervousness or not, in the days to come this he knew; life might have been a different story for him had he only followed that woman instead of retiring to his own apartments to plan a cowardly crime. With the blundering, uncertain steps of one stricken blind in the very act of fight, Madame Benvarde had rushed on—down the dark passage, across the corridor leading to the wing, and then, like a flash, under the arch to the spiral staircase leading up to the turret chamber.

Not once did she cry out after that startled scream when Colonel Vallory spoke to her from the doorway of his own apartment ; not once did she turn to look back, for madness seemed to have seized upon her and she was conscious of but one desire, to reach- the top of the turret before her senses left her.

Upward and onward she went, her footsteps falling fust, her hands stretched out as though in the darkness she groped for some support, and then quite suddenly there was the sound of a door opening far overhead, the faint glare of a light striking down the circular walls, and then :

" Who's there— there?" called out in French an excited voice, sunk to a whisper, and almost on the instant: " Go back ! go back !" answered madame, glancing upward as she hastened. "Itis I —I—l ! Go back, for God's sake !"

There was no reply—the voice was recognised, the command obeyed. A startled gasp was all that gave answer, then the light vanished., a door closed, and once again madame was climbing the spiral staircase in utter darkness—wildly struggling to gain the tower's top. Turn after turn she made in that same frantic way, then with a gasp of relief she reached the landing, reached the door of the turret chamber, staggered in and closed it swiftly behind her. "J[on Dim! what is it?" called out a startled voice, as she shot the bolt and full back against the door, gasping hard, her eyes closed, and one hand pressed against Iter heart. " Madame—my lady I Oh, what is it?"

It is a strangely familiar voice that makes this terrified appeal and a strangely familiar figure that glides forward us she speaks, for what the reader has probably anticipated, stands revealed, and the light that Jills the vaulted chamber from end to end, shines down and shows that there are two Fifines in the room.

The same white wig and blue spectacles, the same sombre merino gown and folded neckerchief, the same lace cap, the same colourless face—as like as two peas in all things save the queer, conspicuous breastpin upon the " madam " against the door— face to face they stand, these living counterparts, and this is the secret of that peculiar double voice !

For a second that panting figure leans against the door almost too weak to stand, then there is a sudden movement —swift, flashing, wholly panther-like—she utters one great cry of suffering, drops on her knees before that other "madam,' and then : "Save me, save me !" she breaks out in an awful voice. " Hide me somewhere from that man's malice—help me for God's sake, Fifne ! He is hero—Archer Blake is here —under the roof of Oakhurst." " Mees Rose !" "It is true—true, Fifne! I have seen him, heard his voice, lie spoke to me—to me, and I almost dropped dead at his feet. He is here, I tell you. He has learned the truth—God knows how—but I feel that he has learned the truth and has come to hunt me down ?"

" Mees Rose! Ah, Mon Dieu ! You are mad. Archer Blake here!—at Oakhurst? Oh, impossible." " Would to God it were !" was the broken response, " but such misery as mine would recognise its author through a deeper disguise than his. You were deceived because you knew so little of him, but every tone in his voice, every line in his face is seared upon my memory with the brand of an awful recollection, and I tell you that I know the truth. This Colonel Vallory and Archer Blake are one !"

Fifinc fell away from her with a smothered gasp. "Colonel Vallory!" she uttered in an awful voice. Ah, mafoi ! Colonel Vallory and Archer Blake the one man ! Mamzelle Idelette's father, that coward, and—mon Dim! mon Dieu,.' who then is she ? Miladi —Mees Rose—ah, God of the helpless ! is it —can it be, then, that she is Floy ?"' The kneeling figure started bolt upright with a sudden cry, her face whitened, her lips shut, she put out two fluttering, nervous hands, and so :

" Floy !" she echoed in a deep-strained whisper. " Ah, Heaven ! I never thought of that—l never thought of that! Floy in his hands?— my lost darling, my poor wronged child in the hands of that wretch ? Oh, no, no, no ! Heaven could not be so cruel. Better she had died, Fifinc, better she had destroyed herself in the madness of that horrible discovery than live for—" " S-h-h-h !" Fifne threw up her hand with a passionate swiftness as she spoke, and flashed by her to the door. "Hush! hush ! I think I hear a footstep. No—yes ! someone is coming. Give me the pin— quick ! quick ! and away !" With a rapid movement Rose Tressylian —who, for a moment, has doubted her identity—tore the breastpin from her neck and flitted breathlessly away. An arch, hung with heavy, woollen curtains, divided the roomy chamber. She parted the thick drapery with nervous haste, slipped out of sight, and let the heavy curtains fall soundlessly behind her. Fifine secured the pin at her neck, softly unbolted the door, dropped into a seat, and took up a book. A minute of silence followed—silence broken only by the rapid pit-pat of a hasty footstep on the spiral staircase—then something rustled across the landing; a knock trembled upon the panel, and in answer to Fifine's mild "Come in," the door swung open, and Mademoiselle Idelette, pale and trembling, stood upon the threshold. "Ma foi! mainzello !" gasped Fifine in blank astonishment, starting up and layingaside her book as she spoke. "Mon Dieu! why have you ventured up here alone when your ankle is so vair bad ? Is there anything wrong below ? Are not your apartments in perfect order ? Haf there been anything neglected, or—" Mademoiselle closed the door and limped toward the chair Fifine extended.

"No, no, there is nothing wrong!" she said, quickly. "It was only a notion of mine, Madame Benvarde. 1 think Mrs. Dane said your name was Benvarde, did she not ? —yes, it was only a notion, and —with a pitiful attempt at a smile—"when you are better acquainted with me, you will learn that my notions rule me, madame." She glanced about the room as she spoke, but Fifine made no response save a bow. A lamp burning on the chimney-piece shed a clear, strong light upon the singer's face and figure, and Fifine, with her hand resting upon the back of a chair, and her spectacled eyes turned upon that beautiful, pallid face, was intently and silently studying it. There was a moment's pause, and then mademoiselle looked up again. " I—l don't know why, but I conceived an odd idea I wanted to speak with you tonight, madame," she said, in a troubled voice ; "and remembering that Mrs. Dane said you occupied the turret chamber, I was bold enough to intrude." " Mamzelle could not intrude—she must be most welcome anywhere !" responded Fifine. "It is not so often that my humble apartment is so much honoured."

" Thank you, and— be seated," returned Idelette. " There is something I want to ask you, madame, :f you will not think it rude."

Madame bowed and seated herself, and again silence fell. With her hands folded in her lap, mademoiselle sat staring through the window at the night sky for several moments, and then : " Mrs. Dane told me of her father's tragic death," went on Idelette, in a strained sort of voice, "and she also said that you were attached to the family at that time. Oh, it must have been a terrible thing, that murder, madame, but still worse, to my thinking, was the accusation of that young girl. What was her name ? Oh, yes— Remington. Mrs. Dane has told me the whole story. It was terribleterrible to accuse, that child, for I feel, madame, that she must have been innocent—don't you ?" " She was innocent, mamzelle," responded Fifine. "I haf nevair doubt that for one moment. Floy Remington nevair fired that murderous shotl am sure she did not!"

A faint, warm colour drifted into Mademoiselle Idelette's cheeks, her eyes filled, and her whole face became radiant.

Oh, bless you — bless you for those words, madame !" she began, then, with a nervous start, "I am such a foolish, sympathetic creature, that I cannot but feel how terrible it must have been for that poorchild to be so shamefully misjudged," she added, quickly," and it seems so unnatural to connect her with that crime because she wrote a foolish letter and then ran away. Ah, that was indeed a tragical night, madame" — fighting hard to steady her voice. " Mrs. Dane told me that not only was her father killed, butbut that this Floy Remington's mother died of heart disease almost at the same hour !" " Old, mamzelle, she wandered to the home of my old motliair, and dropped dead there."

The faint colour went out of Idelette's face, her lips tightened, her eyes closed. "It was true then, madame?" she uttered, in a wavering voice. " She did die as he—as they said ?" Fifine bowed her head.

" Oui, mamzelle," she answered. "She did die as you have heard, and she was buried on the same day as Mees Norma's father. I was at the funeral. I saw her coffin placed in the grave, poor lady. My mother was the vair last to see her alive !"

"Your mother!" murmured Idelette, glancing around. " Oh, yes, I remember, Mrs. Dane told me she was old and feeble in intellect, but still lived— she occupied this chamber with you, but— Ido not see her, madame, and I would like to kiss the hand that last held hers alive. I would like to speak with her. I should like so much to hear all the particulars of how that poor mother died." Fifine arose and walked toward the curtained arch.

" Mamzelle can see her, but I can promise leetle else to night," she said, slowly. " There are days when she is little more than an idiot—days when she does not even know me—and this has been one of them. The doctor told us, years ago, that the moon's changes were the cause of her imbecile moments. Look, mamzclle! all day she haf been sitting thus !" As she spoke she gathered up the woollen folds and drew the curtains back from the arch, revealing a little room dimly lighted by one long, narrow window, like a slit in the tower wall.

The faint, silvery dusk of moonlight filtered in, just revealing a curtained bed, a few gay pictures, a table with a basket of knitting, and under the narrow window— huddled up in a deep, soft chair —a woman's figure, with loose white hair falling about her face and shoulders.

Her slippered feet rested upon an ottoman, her bent figure was folded in a serge gown, belted at the waist, but so large and loose that the curves of her body were utterly lost in it, a faded kerchief was knotted about her neck, and a cap lay on the floor beside her.

Her hands were locked in her lap, her back turned toward the window, her eyes fastened on the shadow that came and went across the strip of moonlight on the floor a?r she rocked to and fro with careless monotony, and stared at the moving shade through the tangles of her dishevelled hair. " You can see, mamzelle, she would not know you," murmured Fifine, as Idelette rose and glided to her side. "You may speak to her if you choose, but I mooch fear she will no answer. This is one of her bad nights, poor mother !" Mademoiselle went forward softly and kissed one of the folded hands, but the swaying figure never paused, the shrouded face never lifted, and with a sigh the prima donna turned away. "It is terrible —terrible, madame!" she murmured, as she returned to the main room. " Would to Heaven I could do something to restore her, if only as a reward for Tier goodness to that poor creature whose eyes she closed, but Hear it is useless to hope at her age. Good-night, and I thank you for your kindness, Madame Benvarde ; I will go back to my room and try to sleep now." " Shall I assist you down the staircase, mamzelle ?"

" No—no, it is not necessary. My ancle is much better, and besides, I have the baluster to guide me." As she spoke she walked slowly to the door and turned the knob.

" Good-night again," she said, pausing on the threshold and extending her hand to Filine. "For all my fame, I am a very lonely, friendless girl, madame, and in the name of that other lonely and friendless girl, I thank you for the belief in her innocence."

Fiiine had taken down the lamp and walked to her side for the purpose of lighting her down the staircase, and as that soft', gemmed hand reached out to her, she took it and lifted it to her lips. " I haf done only joostice to Floy Remington, mam/.e11e," she said, in a strangely nervous voice. " I did not see the murder committed, but I know she did not do it !"

"And I know that God blesses you for that belief, madame, and that she would bless you if she only knew !" responded Idelette.

Then, with a sort of sob, she bent forward quickly, dropped a kiss upon Fifine's cheek, and was gone. Her footfall sounded for a minute upon the staircase—fainter and fainter as she went down and out; then silence fell, and with a nervous haste Fifine went back to the turret chamber and set down the lamp. The woollen curtains were closed over the archway ; she sprung to them and drew them aside, revealing the swaying figure in the soft chair.

"Mees Rose!" she began ; but before she could finish the sentence, the chair at the window was vacated, a. white wig lay at her feet, a nervous hand shut suddenly upon her arm, and then, with a broken, heartsick utterance :—

" 'Tis she, Fifine, changed past even my recognition; but it is indeed Floy !" exclaimed Rose Tressylian, as she threw off the serge gown and staggered to the chair Idelette had vacated but a minute before. "It is my child, my Floy, and, oh, the misery of it ! I cannot, dare not proclaim myself to her. When she kissed my hand and whispered, ' Bless you for your goodness to my mother!' Fifine, she acknowledged herself to the woman she believed insane, and yet I dared not give answer, I dared not return my own child's kiss. They are here—both my girls—here where I may see and speak with them every hour, and yet I must be a stranger. Oh ! misery ! misery ! misery ! is there never to be any peace for me in this lower world ? What am I living for ? Why am I dragging out this terrible existence ? Better you had left me in that coffin, Fifine; better you had closed down the lid and let them bury me alive than that Archer Blake should come back into my life and stand between me and my children !" CHAPTER XXIX. BEFORE DAWN. The strained and husky voice broke down with that heart-sick outcry, and as though the cross of suffering was too heavy for her, she bowed her head upon the cushioned arm of the chair and wept like a heart-broken child. " Miladi, Mees Rose, my darling meestress !" murmured Fifine, sinking on her knees beside the chair and drawing that bowed head to her bosom. "Ah, Dim! you imoosb not gif way like this; and, oh, you moost not say sooch terrible things. Leave you in your coffin after I discovered you lived let them bury you alive, do you say ? Ah, no, no, no ! it would haf been too horrible even for one I hated, mooch less you I love. Ah, migiionne, my own beau-tee-ful meestress! what would poor Fifine's life haf been without you? When bub a child I did run away from my

own poor mothair to marry the man I loved, only to find him a worthless drunkard, who struck me before the honeymoon was ovair. Years of sorrow and anguish I lived before he died, and what was I but a penniless beggar when through you I was lifted and placed at the head of the household at Darkendale, when you wished my mother to aid you in your plans? For her there was every luxury, every comfort in her old age; for me, ah ! you could not haf been kinder to your own flesh and blood. I love you, miladi ; my poor mothair loved you always, and we would have laid down more than life itself for your dear sake. "Oh, mignonne, mignonneJ and you speak of leaving you in your coffin, a", though it was not like the glory of heaven to me when you awoke from that trance, so like to death, and walked into the kitchen at Darkendale that thrice blessed day, five years ago. Ah, miladi! life was vair dark to me one minute before that; but then I knew that I had still something to live for in this dreary world. My startled outcry had alarmed the house, and I did hear my fellowservants rooshing downstairs. I took you in my arms and bore you back to the coffin. I implored you to feign death until they were gone ; and that night, while we were alone in the house, we filled the coffin with earth, screwed down the covair, and, while I was at the funeral, you were at Darkendale, nursing Mees Norma. Through all the weeks of her delerium, you watched by her bedside night and day, and when, at last, she married Meester Dane and came across the seas, why then—" " Then the second era of my miserable life began !" supplemented Rose, huskily. "On the night you three left Darkendale in secret, I, like the shadow I have ever been, stole after. You went to Boston— to New York, where for weeks I shut myself up in a hotel, waiting for news of you. You wrote me, daily, for one long year, until, at last, there came the blessed letter that told me of the purchase of this house, and the scheme you had devised. Your poor mother, my faithful Nichette, had been so overcome on the night of my supposed death that the shock had turned her brain, and in the belief that the sea voyage, combined with the skill of the European surgeons, would benefit her, Mr. Dane had kindly purchased her passage and taken her to Europe with you. He had placed her in charge of an eminent London physician, paid for every comfort and luxury you could wish, and promised that when she was well enough she should come to Oakhurst and live there with you. Ah, Fifine ! there are some good men left in the world, after all !"

Madame made no response. A strange pallor had settled down over her face, her hands were trembling violently, and rising abruptly, she walked over to the window. " Through this generous act of his, combined with the unexpected decree of Heaven," continued Rose Tressylian, "you wrote me that you at last saw the way to our reunion and the fulfilment of my lifelong prayer be near my child. Your mother had suddenly died while under going an operation, but that secret you had kept from Mr. Dane. Instead, you had told him that in a month you wanted to bring her to Oakhurst; he had given his permission, and you wrote me to come on and imperso nate her !"

A still more violent tremor had taken possession of madame, her face had grown even whiter, she drew closer to the window and stared silently and fixedly at the distant woods.

" What followed, my presence here proclaims," continued that dreary voice. "I came as you suggested, and was brought up to this tower after nightfall. There was little danger of discovery, for the plea of insanity was sufficient for me to act strangely as I would ; he gave me but a momentary glance when he came up to see me, while Norma was far too ill to climb the stairs more than once since first I came here, and then it always is when a visitor comes —it was one of my ' bad days' and I could only sit and rock myself in the darkness. " I was under the same roof with her, but it was not enough. I wanted to be where I could see her every day, where I could speak with her, minister to her wants, and out of that desire grew the scheme of the double. A serious cold you had caught some months ago now began to have a peculiar effect upon you ; your eyes became weak and necessitated those great, green glasses, your hair began to grow greyer, until you were able at ast to wear a white wig without question and suspicion, then your voice utterly forsook you for one whole week, and, when at last it returned, it was subject to those strange changes. But during that week when you were entirely voiceless, garments, the exact counterpart of your own, were made for me, a white wig and blue spectacles were purchased, you affected oddities of dress that were so marked as to become noticeable, and these I duplicated. At a sale of the jewels of the ex-queen of Spain, Neil Dane had purchased a fantastic breastpin, and presented it to you as a token of his gratitude. It was so odd in its workmanship and design that a duplicate could not be found, and that oddity made it of double value to us, for, by exchanging it, we set the seal of identity upon 'Fifine Benvarde,' whether represented by you or me, and we came and went, and played the part of one woman from that hour to this." No answerno movement.

Madame, standing like a statue, was staring fixedly at the strip of woodland far oft' toward the east. It was as dark and gloomy as it had been from the first moment she looked, but, all of a sudden, a light soared up above the trees —a light like a large, red star that went up and fixed itself just above the top of the foliageand, with a sharp, low cry, she started back. " What is it? What is the matter?" exclaimed Rose Tressylian, glancing up quickly. "It is nothing— !" responded Fifine, lifting her hands to her lips. '' There was a pin in my dress, Mees Rose, and it pricked my fingair. Sooch a vair foolish little thing, but it gave me a start. But hark ! there is Herrick with the luggage. Take the pin, mignonne, and go below to superintend the putting out of the lights. Dismiss the servants, but do not come up until you haf allowed me to get out, and haf the key ready." " Out ?" repeated Rose, in astonishment. " Are you going out to-night, Fifine?" " Oui —I must!" answered madams, avert :ing her face. "What if you should be ill, migmnne ? We haf not another drop of your medicine left, and without the remedy what should I do if that poor heart of yours should smite you down again ?" " Oh, never mind the drops, Fifine, I am quite well at present. Don't go to-night'; to-morrow will bo time enough." "No, I cannot run the reesk, mignonne. I should not sleep a wink all night for fear of the resoolt. Ma foi! you moost not try to dissuade me, Mees Rose. I moost go to the chemist's to-night. To-morrow, who knows what may prevent." " But it is such a long walk to the heart of London, and at this hour of the night—" "I would go if it were ten time as far, Mees Rose," answered Fifine. " Haf I not say your life is dearer to me than all else ? Quick, fasten on the pin, miladi, and go. Herrick moost be waiting. In twenty minutes I rejoin you." Thus admonished, Rose offered no further objection. Deftly fastening the pin in her kerchief, she arranged her costume, adjusted her wig, and opening the door wently swiftly and silently down the spiral staircase. Madame listened until the sound of her retreating footsteps had ceased to echo, then with nervous haste she flashed to the window and looked out.

The red star still hung above the trees. She uttered a sob, turned away, and began hastily to change her costume. Twenty minutes later, when the luggage had been carried up, the servants had been dismissed, and the lights extinguished, bonneted, veiled, and wrapped in a dark cloak, she glided down the stairs and met Rose Tressylian at the door. "Gif me the keydon't sit up for me !" she said, in a hurried whisper. "I may be vair late, and I can let myself in. Goodnight, miladi, and God guard you !" Then, like a shadow, she slipped through the door and vanished.

The path to the gates stretched out before her, clear as day in the bright, strong light of the summer moon, but she did not take it, although the road to London lay that

way. Instead, she crept into the shadow of the trees, hurried along towards the rear of the estate, and went in the direction of that glowing, crimson star. " I haf plenty of the drops, and I can show her a fresh phial when I return," she murmured. " God forgive me for deceiving her, but it is for her own good. Oh, miladi, miladi, if you only knew the truth, what would you say how would you bear to touch Fifine's hand Oh, mignonne, mignonne! Ib was for love of you, for indignation

at the wrongs heaped on you. —God .knows it was only that. Forgive, miladi, forgiveas I think heaven must, remembering the bitter curse." . : " ' . She had reached the rear gate of Oakhursb by this time, and quickly unlatching it, she slipped out, and took the path to the woods.

A half-hour's brisk walking brought her to the clustering trees, and taking the zigzag footpath that wound between them, she hurried on for ten minutes, turned abruptly into a narrow lane leading to the left, and pressed on until she reached a little clearing. A house stood in the centre of —a house with a sort of flag-staff upon the roof, and close to the top of this burned a glowing red lantern.

The windows were curtained, but nob enough to prevent light from stealing through the crevices and proclaiming the lonely house inhabited, and almost as Fifine entered the clearing, another evidence of an occupant was given in the shape of a sudden shriek.

And such a shriek ! one long-drawn, mar-row-freezing note that made the very echoes reel.

" Mon Dim !it is terrible !" gasped Fifine. " I hope there is no one abroad to-night. It terrifies me to think what may happen if those cries are ever heard, andGrande Dim! again! What a shriekwhat a shriek !"

With a sudden movement she quickened her pace to a run, reached the low doorway of the house, and struck the panel a sharp blow.

"Who's there? What do you want?", called out a woman's voice from within.

"It is I—Fifine. Open, in Heaven's name !" responded madame. " I saw the signal and hastened as speedily as possible !" Perhaps this too was a signal—at any rate, there was no attempt to admit her until she had ceased speaking. "I am glad you have come. I can do nothing without you to-night," responded the same feminine voice, then the bolt slid back, the door swung upon its hinges, and Fifine stepped into the presence of two women.

One, tall, muscular, raw-boned, almost masculine in her appearance; the other— lb is five years since you looked upon that bent) figure and wrinkled face, but those five years have not changed them past recognition, for as the light of the oil-lamp falls upon her you see and —Nichette 1 [To be continued.]