ce within the hour if its lordly
master dreamed I was here talking to the man he hates."

"And my lady, any news from her?"

"Not a word. She came down to dinner beautifully dressed, but white as
the snow lying yonder. She and Sir Everard dined _tete-a-tete_. I
take my meals with the housekeeper, now," smiling bitterly. "My Lady
Harriet doesn't like me. The butler told me they did not speak six
words during the whole time of dinner."

"Both in the sulks," said Mr. Parmalee. "Well, it's natural. He's
dying to know, and she'll be torn to pieces afore she breathes a word.
She's that sort. But this shyin' and holding off won't do with me.
I'm getting tired of waiting, and--and so's another party up to London.
Tell her so, Sybilla, with G. W. P.'s compliments, and say that I give
her just two more days, and if she doesn't come to book before the end
of that time, I'll sell her secret to the highest bidder."

"Yes!" Sybilla said, breathlessly; "and now for that secret, George!"

"You won't tell?" cried Mr. Parmalee, a little alarmed at this
precipitation. "Say you won't--never--so help you!"

"Never--I swear it. Now go on!"

* * * * *

An hour later, Sybilla Silver, in her impenetrable disguise, re-entered
Kingsland Court. No one had seen her go--no one saw her return. She
gained her own room and took off her disguise unobserved.

Once only on her way to it she had paused--before my lady's door--and
the dark, beautiful face, wreathed with a deadly smile of hate and
exultation, was horribly transformed to the face of a malignant,
merciless demon.

CHAPTER XXI.

A STORM BREWING.

Sir Everard Kingsland was blazing in the very hottest of the flame when
he tore himself forcibly away from the artist and buried himself in his
study. The unutterable degradation of it all, the horrible humiliation
that this man and his wife--his--were bound together by some mysterious
secret, nearly drove him mad.

"Where there is mystery there must be guilt!" he fiercely thought.
"Nothing under heaven can make it right for a wife to have a secret
from her husband. And she knew it, and concealed it before she married
me, and means to deceive me until the end. In a week her name and that
of this low-bred ruffian will be bandied together throughout the
country."

And then, like a man mad indeed, he tore up and down the apartment, his
hands clinched, his face ghastly, his eyes bloodshot. And th