Markland caught her breath, as if the air had suddenly grown
stifling.

"Will they ever beat more evenly?" she murmured, in a sad voice.

"Why, Agnes! Into what a strange mood you have fallen! You are not
like yourself."

"And I am not, to my own consciousness. For weeks it has seemed to
me as if I were in a troubled dream."

"The glad waking will soon come, I trust," said Mr. Markland, with
forced cheerfulness of manner.

"I pray that it may be so," was answered, in a solemn voice.

There was silence for some moments, and then the other's full heart
overflowed. Mr. Markland soothed her, with tender, hopeful words,
calling her fears idle, and seeking, by many forms of speech, to
scatter the doubts and fears which, like thick clouds, had
encompassed her spirit.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

FROM that period, Mr. Markland not only avoided all conference with
his wife touching their daughter's relation to Mr. Lyon, but became
so deeply absorbed in business matters, that he gave little earnest
thought to the subject. As the new interests in which he was
involved grew into larger and larger importance, all things else
dwindled comparatively.

At the end of six months he was so changed that, even to his own
family, he was scarcely like the same individual. All the time he
appeared thinking intensely. As to "Woodbine Lodge," its beauties no
longer fell into thought or perception. The charming landscape
spread itself wooingly before him, but he saw nothing of its varied
attractions. Far away, fixing his inward gaze with the fascination
of a serpent's eye, was the grand result of his new enterprise, and
all else was obscured by the brightness of a vortex toward which he
was moving in swiftly-closing circles. Already two-thirds of his
handsome fortune was embarked in this new scheme, that was still
growing in magnitude, and still, like the horse-leech, crying "Give!
give!" All that now remained was "Woodbine Lodge," valued at over
twenty-five thousand dollars. This property he determined to leave
untouched. But new calls for funds were constantly being made by Mr.
Fenwick, backed by the most flattering reports from Mr. Lyon and his
associates in Central America, and at last the question of selling
or heavily mortgaging the "Lodge" had to be considered. The latter
alternative was adopted, and the sum of fifteen thousand dollars
raised, and thrown, with a kind of desperation, into the whirlpool
which had already swallowed