an avenging
fate to thank for such a terrible and startling coincidence. I saw that,
at least, in her eyes and her face, Roger, though I didn't see all I had
been looking for. Think what she must have been feeling! She helped to
send an innocent man who had loved and trusted her into this exile, worse
than death. She thought herself free from him forever, because he was at
the other end of the world, dead-alive, in the grave where she buried
him. Suddenly she finds herself looking at that grave, unable to escape.
At any moment it may open, and the dead appear to accuse her. What a
situation!"

"What an imagination!" exclaimed Roger. "Dear child, you have let it
carry you away as far from the truth as you've carried this woman from
her home--this woman whom you've so audaciously kidnapped."

"Wait," said Virginia, her voice trembling. "I haven't done with her.
This is only the first turn of the thumbscrew. She doesn't dream yet of
the ordeal she'll have to go through."

"May have to go through," quietly amended Roger Broom.

"You mean--oh, Roger, don't you think we'll succeed in what we've come
for so far, so very far?"

Virginia, with tears sparkling in uplifted eyes, was irresistible.

"I hope it, dear," the man who loved and wanted her said, gravely. "I
never thought it, you know. But the way hasn't seemed far to me, because
I have been with you and the time will not have been wasted for me if we
fail, because it has kept me by your side. I shall think, 'I have done
what I could, and it has pleased Virginia.'"

"It has made Virginia grateful for all her life long," said the girl
softly, "and whatever happens she will never forget. You have done so
much already! Disapproving my plan, still you loyally did all you could
to forward it. You used your influence to get us the one chance here,
without which we could hope to do nothing. You wrote to the French
Ambassador in London, the English Ambassador in France, and finally, when
our interests were so twisted up in masses of official red-tape that it
seemed they could never get disentangled, you ran on to Paris yourself to
call on the Minister of the Colonies. If it had not been for the permit
you got from him, we might as well have given up coming here, for all the
prison doors would have been shut to us. Now, through him, and through
you, they will be open, and our first step is clear. All this made me
feel hopeful, when we were far away; I felt sure that we shou