pinion, I needed
none. Out of your united lives, let me pass as a fleeting gray shadow."

"Out of my life you can never pass. Into it you have brought
disappointment, humiliation, and a keenness of suffering such as I
never imagined I was capable of enduring; and some recompense I will
have. You hope to plunge into the vortex of a great city, where you can
elude observation and obliterate all traces. Do not cherish the ghost
of such a delusion. Go where you may, but I give you fair warning, you
cannot escape me; and the day you meet that guilty vagabond, you betray
him to the scouts of justice."

He held her hands in a close, warm clasp, and a flush crossed his brow,
as he looked down into her quivering face where a smile which he could
not interpret, seemed only a challenge.

"Would a generous man, worthy of Miss Gordon, harass and persecute a
very unhappy and unfortunate woman, who asks at his hands only to be
forgotten completely, to be left in peace?"

"I lay no claim to generosity, and, where you are concerned, I am
supremely selfish. Miss Gordon has no need of your championship; she is
quite equal to redressing her own wrongs, when the necessity presents
itself. You are struggling to free your hands, so be it. I have a close
carriage at the gate, and to make assurance doubly sure, I have come to
take you to 'Elm Bluff'; to show you the face, and ask you to identify
it. Understand me, I will harass you with no questions; nor will I
intrude upon you there. I have ordered the grounds cleared, have posted
police to prevent the possibility of any occurrence unpleasant to you;
and all I ask is, that alone, you will examine this witness, produced
so strangely for your justification. I shall wait for you in the rose
garden, and if you can come down from that gallery and tell me that the
face is unknown to you, that the man photographed in the act of
stealing, is a stranger, is not the man you love so well that you bore
worse than death to save him from punishment, then I will give up the
quest; and you may flee unwatched to the ends of the earth."

"Never again will I see that place which has blasted every hope that
life held for me."

"Not even to clear away aspersion from his beloved name?"

"I pray God, his beloved and sacred name may never be associated with a
crime so awful."

"You will not go to see the face? Remember, I shall ask you neither yea
nor nay. I shall need only to look once into your eyes, after