very long
time. Besides, we had in one of the Bellair doctors, who agreed with
Dr. Le Guise in every particular."

"Well, I must see this learned gentleman to-morrow, and my step-papa
also, I think. Step-mamma, you look fatigued; dining is too much for
your strength. Let us leave the gentlemen to their wine and cigars."

As if she had been presiding at that table all her life, Miss Payne
arose, bowed to the two men, and preceding the two astonished ladies,
swept from the dining-room.

Cora, as she followed the graceful figure, could hardly restrain her
mortification and rage. She felt a longing amounting almost to frenzy,
to spring upon the girl and stab her in the back.

The two men did not linger long in the dining-room. Each felt anxious,
for reasons of his own, to be again in the presence of Miss Payne, and
so soon joined the ladies in the drawing-room.

After a little more hypocrisy on all their parts, Cora arose to retire
to her apartments, declaring that the excitement of Miss Payne's
arrival had made her forgetful of herself and her health, and that she
began to feel her fictitious strength departing.

Madeline, too, arose, and offering her arm to Cora, said that she
would also retire. Nodding a careless good-night to the three deserted
ones, she left the room, with the fair invalid leaning languidly upon
her arm.

To the surprise and dissatisfaction of Cora, Madeline not only
accompanied her to her own apartment, but entered with her. Having
closed the door carefully behind them, she turned about, and dropping
all her assumed gayety and friendliness, said with the air of a queen
commanding a subject:

"Now, Mrs. Arthur, let us understand each other!"

The sudden and marked change of her voice and manner startled the
woman out of all her self-possession. She stood staring in the stern
face of the girl with all of the audacity frightened out of her own.

Cora was an adventuress to the tips of her fingers. She was fond of
intrigue; she possessed a certain kind of courage; but she was, after
all, at heart, a coward. She was quite willing to compromise her soul
for gain, but not her body. In short, she loved herself too well to
find any piquancy in personal danger.

Since the loss of the papers and the flight of Celine Leroque had
shaken her feeling of security, Cora had been restive and anxious to
bring this plot to a climax. She had found it not at all to her taste
to have Percy holding over her head