e last time at the dainty appointments of the luxurious
apartment.

"Adieu, beautiful Cyrene, adieu, for ever!" he murmured, a smile of
irony on his lips.

Stealthily he had come, stealthily he withdrew. He did not take the
trouble to close the writing-desk, but he was careful to leave the
little key sticking in the clock door, where its rightful owner would be
sure to see it.

He found the police officer still awake and waiting for him. A cab was
quickly summoned, and the two started on their journey to Transylvania.

When the Marchioness Caldariva entered her boudoir a little later, her
eyes fell at once on her open writing-desk, and she perceived that the
morocco pocketbook was gone. She laughed, but it was not a pleasant
laugh to hear.

"Very good," said she, half aloud; "you would have it so, and I am not
to blame."

* * * * *

Anna Adorjan hovered on the brink of the grave. She had heard that
Benjamin Vajdar was charged with a penal offence, and she felt only too
well convinced that if such a charge had been brought against him he
must be guilty. If guilty, he would be sentenced to a term of
imprisonment, and she would never see him return to his old home as she
had once so confidently expected. She had nothing now to live for. Her
dear brother Manasseh was restored to his family, and she was ready to
die.

"Brother," she gently entreated, as she lay on her bed of pain, "if he
should by any chance ever come back to us, promise me to treat him as
you would if I were still here. You will promise me that, won't you?"

A silent nod of Manasseh's bowed head was her sufficient assurance that
her slightest wish would be respected.

"And even though he may never come back, I wish you to make my
resting-place in the rocks large enough for two. Perhaps he will return
sometime, when he sees his life drawing to a close, and he may be glad
to find a place ready for him by my side. You will do as I wish in this
matter, brother Manasseh, will you not?"

Another nod of the bowed head.

* * * * *

The prediction uttered by Manasseh, when his enemy lay in his power in
the desolate church at St. George, was completely fulfilled. Though he
would have infinitely preferred banishment to Siberia, Benjamin Vajdar
was forced to return to Toroczko, to the very house where he had been
reared, and there take up his abode as a state prisoner. The government
made h