Lionel out. Thankful, probably, to get out. The
playing the host with a mind ill at ease, how it jars upon the troubled
and fainting spirit! Jan, disdaining the invitation to the drawing-room,
had hoisted himself on the top of an old carved ebony cabinet that stood
in the hall, containing curiosities, and sat there with his legs
dangling. He jumped off when Lionel appeared, wound his arm within his,
and drew him out on the terrace.

"I have come to the bottom of it, Lionel," said he, without further
circumlocution. "I dropped upon the ghost just now and pinned him. It is
not Fred Massingbird."

Lionel paused, and then drew a deep breath; like one who has been
relieved from some great care.

"Cannonby said it was not!" he exclaimed. "Cannonby is here, Jan, and he
assures me Frederick Massingbird is dead and buried. Who is it, then?
Have you found it out?"

"I pinned him, I say," said Jan. "I was going down to Hook's, and he
crossed my path. He--"

"It is somebody who has been doing it for a trick?" interrupted Lionel.

"Well--yes--in one sense. It is not Fred Massingbird, Lionel; he is
dead, safe enough; but it is somebody from a distance; one who will
cause you little less trouble. Not any less, in fact, putting Sibylla
out of the question."

Lionel stopped in his walk--they were pacing the terrace--and looked at
Jan with some surprise; a smile, in his new security, lightening his
face.

"There is nobody in the world, Jan, dead or alive, who could bring
trouble to me, save Frederick Massingbird. Anybody else may come, so
long as he does not."

"Ah! You are thinking only of Sibylla."

"Of whom else should I think?"

"Yourself," replied Jan.

Lionel laughed in his gladness. _How_ thankful he was for his wife's
sake ONE alone knew. "I am nobody, Jan. Any trouble coming to me I can
battle with."

"Well, Lionel, the returned man is John Massingbird."

"John--Mass--ingbird!"

Of all the birds in the air and the fishes in the sea--as the children
say--he was the very last to whom Lionel Verner had cast a thought. That
it was John who had returned, had not entered his imagination. He had
never cast a doubt on the fact of his death. Bringing the name out
slowly, he stared at Jan in very astonishment.

"Well," said he presently, "John is not Frederick."

"No," assented Jan. "He can put in no claim to your wife. But he can to
Verner's Pride."

The words caused Lionel's heart to go on with a bound. A great