-rooms.

Once he had been one of the most popular officers afloat, yet
to-day--well, he found it convenient to thus efface himself in rural
Hampshire, and live alone with the sweet young girl who was all in all
to him, and who was happy in her belief that her devoted father was a
gentleman.

This girl with the blue eyes and hair of sunshine was the only link
between Phil Poland and his past--that past when he held a brilliant
record as a sailor and had been honoured and respected. He held her
aloof from every one, being ever in deadly fear lest, by some chance
word, she should learn the bitter truth--the truth concerning that
despicable part which he had been compelled to play. Ah, yes, his was
a bitter story indeed.

Before Sonia should know the truth he would take his own life. She was
the only person remaining dear to him, the only one for whom he had a
single thought or care, the only person left to him to respect and to
love. Her influence upon him was always for good. For the past year he
had been striving to cut himself adrift from evil, to reform, to hold
back from participating in any dishonest action--for her dear sake.
Her soft-spoken words so often caused him to hate himself and to bite
his lip in regret, for surely she was as entirely ignorant of the
hideous truth as Mr. Shuttleworth, the white-headed parson, or the
rustic villagers themselves.

Yes, Phil Poland's position was indeed a strange one.

What Du Cane had just suggested to him would, he saw, put at least
twenty thousand pounds into the pockets of their ingenious
combination, yet he had refused--refused because of the fair-headed
girl he loved so well.

Within himself he had made a solemn vow to reform. Reformation would
probably mean a six-roomed cottage with a maid-of-all-work, yet even
that would be preferable to a continuance of the present mode of life.

Bitter memories had, of late, constantly arisen within him.
Certain scenes of violence, even of tragedy, in that beautiful
flower-embowered villa beside the Mediterranean at Beaulieu, half-way
between Nice and Monte Carlo, had recurred vividly to him. He was
unable to wipe those horrible visions from the tablets of his memory.
He had realized, at last, what a pitiless blackguard he had been, so
he had resolved to end it all.

And now, just as he had made up his mind, Arnold Du Cane had arrived
unexpectedly from Milan with an entirely new and original scheme--one
in which the risk o