ent of a
cherished plan.

To-day, while those hot slender fingers clung to his, and he leaned
over the pillow, watching his victim, a rising tide surged, rolled up
from some unexplored ocean of strange sensations, and its devouring
waves threatened to demolish and engulf the stately structure pride and
ambition had combined to rear. A brilliant alliance that insured great
wealth, that promised a secure stepping-stone to political preferment,
was apparently a substantial bulwark against the swelling billows of an
unaccountable whim; yet he was impotent to resist the yearning
tenderness which impelled him to forget all else, in one determined
effort to rescue and shelter the life he had been the chief agent in
imperilling. Clear eyed, keen witted, he did not for an instant deceive
himself; and he knew that neither compassion for misfortune, nor yet a
chivalrous remorse for having consigned a helpless woman to a dungeon,
explained this new emotion that threatened to dominate all others.

Cool reason assured him that under existing entanglements, the girl's
speedy death would prove the most felicitous solution of this devouring
riddle, which so unexpectedly crossed his smooth path; then what meant
the vehement protest of his throbbing heart, the passionate longing to
snatch her from disease, and disgrace, and keep her safe forever in the
close cordon of his arms?

The door was cautiously opened and closed, and noiselessly as a
phantom, Leo Gordon stood within the room. One swift survey enabled her
to grasp all the details. The small, comfortless, dismal apartment, the
barred narrow window, the bare floor, the low iron cot in one corner,
with its beautiful burden; the watching attitude of the man, who for
years had possessed her heart. Resting one elbow on his knee, his chin
leaned on his left hand, but the light fell full on his handsome face,
and she started, marvelled at the expression of the brilliant eyes
fixed upon the sufferer; eyes suffused and eloquent with tenderness,
never before seen in their cold sparkling depths.

Mighty indeed must be the compassion, evocative of that intense
yearning look in his usually guarded, irresponsive countenance. A
painfully humiliating sense of her own personal incompetence to arouse
the feeling, so legibly printed on her lover's features, jarred upon
Leo's heart like a twanging dissonance breaking the harmonious flow of
minor chords; but a noble pity strangled this jealous thril