e
painting-room, shook his head, and pondered.

"They'll never make me believe that cock-and-bull story about Lady
Bearwarden. Ah, Nina! I begin to think this man loves you almost as
well as I could have done!"

CHAPTER XXVII

BLINDED

Tom Ryfe, walking down Berners Street in the worst of humours, saw the
whole game he had been playing slipping out of his hands. If there
were to be no duel, all the trouble he had taken went for nothing;
and even should there be an unseemly _fracas_, and should a meeting
afterwards take place between Lord Bearwarden and Dick Stanmore, what
good would it do him, if her ladyship's name were kept out of the
quarrel? How he cursed this cockney painter's resolution and good
sense! How he longed for some fierce encounter, some desperate
measure, something, no matter what, that should bring affairs to a
crisis! It seemed so silly, so childlike, to be baffled now. Yes, he
had set his heart on Lady Bearwarden. The great master-passion of
his life had gone on gathering and growing till it became, as such
master-passions will, when there is neither honour nor religion to
check them, a fury, over which he had lost all control. And he felt
that, having gone so far, there was no crime, no outrage, he would
shrink from committing, to obtain what he desired now.

When a man is thus ripe for evil he seldom wants opportunity. It must
be admitted the devil never throws a chance away. Open your hand, and
ere you can close it again, he slips a tool in, expressly adapted for
the purpose you design--a tool that, before you have done with it, you
may be sure, will cut your own fingers to the bone.

"Beg pardon, sir, can I speak to you for a minute?" said a
gaudily-dressed, vulgar-looking personage, crossing the street to
accost Tom Ryfe as he emerged from the painter's house. "It's about
a lady. About her ladyship, askin' your pardon. Lady Bearwarden, you
know."

That name was a talisman to arrest Tom's attention. He looked his man
over from head to foot, and thought he had never seen a more ruffianly
bearing, a wilder, sadder face.

"Come up this by-street," said he. "Speak out--I'll keep your counsel,
and I'll pay you well. That's what you mean, I suppose. That's
business. What about Lady Bearwarden?"

The man cursed her deeply, bitterly, ere he replied--"I know _you_,
sir, an' so I ought to, though you don't know _me_. Mr. Ryfe, I seen
you in Belgrave Square, along of _her_. You was a-