ration: "'BY ALL THAT'S SACRED, WHERE DID YOU GET THIS BOOK?'"

--_Page 304_]

"Why, Dad! What's the matter? Irene lent me the book. It belongs to her
father."

"Her father! You don't mean to tell me your friend's father is David
Beverley?"

"Why not, Dad," whispered Lorna, looking with apprehension into his
haggard, excited face.

She guessed even before he spoke what the answer was going to be.

"David Beverley is the man who ruined my life!"

The blow which had fallen was utterly overwhelming. For a moment Lorna
fought against the knowledge like a drowning man battling with the
waters.

"Oh, Dad! Surely there's some mistake. It _can't_ be! Isn't it some
other Beverley perhaps?"

"I know his writing only too well. There's no possibility of a mistake.
Besides, I saw him in Naples--at the end of February. I haven't
forgotten the shock it gave me. Why," turning almost fiercely upon
Lorna, "didn't you tell me your schoolfellow's name before? Have you all
this time been making friends with your father's enemy?"

"I thought I'd often talked about Renie," faltered poor Lorna. "Perhaps
I never mentioned her surname. Oh, Dad! Dad! Is it really true? It's too
horrible to be believed."

Lying in the soft Capri grass, with the pink cistus flowers brushing
her hot cheeks, Lorna raged impotently against the tragedy of a fate
which was changing the dearest friendship of her life into a feud.
Irene!--the only one at school who had sympathized and understood her,
who had behaved with a delicacy and kindness such as no other person had
ever shown her, who had taken her into her home circle and given her the
happiest time she had ever had in her shadowed girlhood; Irene with her
merry gray eyes and her bright sunny hair, the very incarnation of
warm-hearted genuine affection--Irene, her roommate, her buddy, her
chosen confidante. How was it possible ever to regard her as an enemy?
Yet had she not vowed a solemn oath to hate all belonging to the man who
had so desperately injured them? Oh! The world seemed turning upside
down. Loyalty to her father and love for her friend dragged different
ways, and in the bitter conflict her heart was torn in two.

Mr. Carson, haunted to the verge of insanity by the terror of discovery,
was now obsessed with the one idea of escape from Mr. Beverley. He no
longer felt safe on the island. Any moment he dreaded to meet faces that
would betray recognition of his past. The calm and content of