swer you. Give me one more day--only
one," she repeated, with a dull reiteration, out of her utter weariness.

"One day will soon be gone," he said, joyfully, as he bade her good
night.

Alas, how little he knew what that day was to bring forth!

That night the heavens were overcast with heavy clouds, and torrents of
rain poured down upon the face of the earth, and peal after peal of
thunder boomed through the heavy heated air. Helen could not sleep; she
rose, feverish and unrested from her husband's side, and paced wildly and
miserably about the room. Then she went to the window and drew back the
curtain, and looked out upon the storm-driven world. The clouds racked
wildly across the sky; the trees bent and swayed before the howling wind;
the rain beat in floods upon the ground; yet greater and fiercer still
was the tempest that raged in Helen Kynaston's heart. Hatred, jealousy,
and malice strove and struggled within her, and something direr still--a
terror that she could not quench nor stifle; for late that night her
husband had said to her suddenly, without a word of warning or
preparation--

"Helen, do you know a Frenchman called D'Arblet?"

Helen had been at her dressing-table--her back was turned to him--he did
not see the livid pallor which blanched her cheeks at his question.

A little pause, during which she busied herself among the trifles upon
the table.

"No, I never heard the name in my life," she said, at length.

"That is odd--because neither have I--and yet the man has sent me a
parcel." It was of so little importance to him, that it did not occur
to him that there could possibly be any occasion for secresy concerning
Vera's commission. What could an utter stranger have to send to him that
could possibly concern him in any way?

It did not strike him how strained and forced was the voice in which his
wife presently asked him a question.

"And the parcel! You have opened it?"

"No, not yet," began Maurice, stifling a yawn; and he would have gone
on to explain to her that it was not yet actually in his possession,
although, probably, he would not have told her that it was Vera who was
to give it to him; only at that minute the maid came into the room, and
he changed the subject.

But Helen had guessed that it was Vera who was the bearer of that parcel.
How it had come to pass she could not tell, but too surely she divined
that Vera had in her possession those fatal letters that she had once