de; another moment and the door would be
burst open.

"Aphrodite, daughter of----" he began, and recoiled suddenly; for he
heard his name called from without in a voice familiar and once dear to
him.

"Leander, where are you? It's all dark! Speak to me; tell me you've
done nothing rash! Oh, Leander, it's Matilda!"

That voice, which a short while back he would have given the world to
hear once more, appalled him now. For if she came in, the goddess would
discover who she was, and then--he shuddered to think what might happen
then!

Matilda's hand was actually on the door. "Stop where you are!" he
shouted, in despair; "for mercy's sake, don't come in!"

[Illustration: "STOP WHERE YOU ARE!... FOR MERCY'S SAKE, DON'T COME
IN!"]

"Ah! you are there, and alive!" she cried. "I am not too late; and I
_will_ come in!"

And in another instant she burst into the room, and stood there, her
tear-stained face convulsed with the horror of finding him in such
company.

THE THIRTEENTH TRUMP

XIV.

"Your adversary having thus secured the lead with the last trump,
you will be powerless to prevent the bringing-in of the long suit."

ROUGH'S _Guide to Whist._

"What! thinkest thou that utterly in vain
Jove is my sire, and in despite my will
That thou canst mock me with thy beauty still?"

_Story of Cupid and Psyche._

Leander, when he wrote his distracted appeal to Matilda, took it for
granted that she had recognized the statue for something of a
supernatural order, and this, combined with his perplexed state of mind,
caused him to be less explicit than he might have been in referring to
the goddess's ill-timed appearance.

But, unfortunately, as will probably have been already anticipated, the
only result of this reticence was, that Matilda saw in his letter an
abject entreaty for her consent to his marriage with Ada Parkinson, to
avoid legal proceedings, and, under this misapprehension, she wrote the
line that abandoned all claims upon him, and then went on with her
accounts, which were not so neatly kept that day as usual.

What she felt most keenly in Leander's conduct was, that he should have
placed the ring, which to all intent was her own, upon the finger of
another. She could not bear to think of so unfeeling an act, and yet she
thought of it all through the long day, as she sat, outwardly serene, at
her high desk, while