as alive, seemed in some miraculous fashion to
have dwindled to insignificance; in this rebound from fear and despair
difficulties were swept away and the path was clear. The man's mind
leaped to his goal, and a little shiver of prospective joy ran over him.
Once that goal gained he could defy the world. Let eyes look askance,
let tongues wag, he would be safe then--safe for all the rest of his
life, and rich, rich, rich!

For he was playing against a feeble old man's life. Day by day he
watched the low flame sink lower as the flame of an exhausted lamp sinks
and flickers. It was slow, for the old man had still a little strength
left, but the will to live--which was the oil in the lamp--was almost
gone, and the waiting could not be long now. One day, quite suddenly,
the flame would sink down to almost nothing, as at last it does in the
spent lamp. It would flicker up and down rapidly for a few moments, and
all at once there would be no flame there. Old David would be dead, and
a servant would be sent across the river in haste to the rue du Faubourg
St. Honore. Stewart lay back in his chair and tried to imagine that it
was true, that it had already happened, as happen it must before long,
and once more the little shiver, which was like a shiver of voluptuous
delight, ran up and down his limbs, and his breath began to come fast
and hard.

* * * * *

But Richard Hartley drove at once back to the rue d'Assas. He was not
very much disappointed in having learned nothing from Stewart, though he
was thoroughly angry at that gentleman's hint about Ste. Marie and the
unknown lady. He had gone to the rue du Faubourg because, as he had
said, he wished to leave no stone unturned, and, after all, he had
thought it quite possible that Stewart could give him some information
which would be of value. Hartley firmly believed the elder man to be a
rascal, but of course he knew nothing definite save the two facts which
he had accidentally learned from Helen Benham, and it had occurred to
him that Captain Stewart might have sent Ste. Marie off upon another
wild-goose chase such as the expedition to Dinard had been. He would
have been sure that the elder man had had something to do with Ste.
Marie's disappearance if the latter had not been seen since Stewart's
party, but instead of that Ste. Marie had come home, slept, gone out the
next morning, returned again, received a visitor, and gone out to lunch.
It w