n invalid needs waiting on, and she sleeps in my
dressing-room. I don't want to excite suspicion by sending her away,
in order to admit you, and--I don't see that there is much to be
said."

Lucian seemed weighing her words for a moment. Then he asked: "What do
you make of Miss Payne?"

"What do you make of her?" she retorted, quickly.

"Nothing, as yet."

"No more do I."

Another brief silence, and then he asked: "Do you think there is any
immediate danger--for us?"

"As how?"

"From him: Arthur."

Now came Cora's grand coup. She felt pretty sure that Lucian knew of
her interview with Madeline, and believed that she would be telling
him no news when she said:

"Listen! She went with me to my room last night, and she asked a good
many questions about him. And I am sure of this: she is no friend to
him, and if she sees no reason for suspecting any of us, she won't
trouble herself about him. She told me that she ran away from home
because she had been so oppressed by him, and that his attempt to
marry her off, in order to put money in his own pocket, was only one
among many of the things she had endured at his hands. Of one thing I
am sure: the old man may be a stumbling-block to us, but he is an
object of positive hatred to her."

Cora uttered this combination of truth and falsehood without the least
compunction. If she could have warned him of the danger hanging over
them without jeopardizing herself, she would have done so. But that,
she knew, was impossible.

He had planned this "game" which now bade fair to be such an utter
failure, and if anyone must suffer, why, let it be him. And then, too,
she reasoned, she had not gathered from the words of Madeline that she
suspected Mr. Davlin of duplicity of any kind. As for the Professor,
Cora cared little what became of him. She could gain nothing and
might, doubtless would, lose much by warning him.

Lastly, Cora assured herself that were their positions reversed, and
Lucian the one who saw that his own safety lay in leaving her to her
fate, he would not scruple to make her his scapegoat. And in this she
was quite right.

Again the man seemed to puzzle over some knotty, mental question. Then
he arose, and leaning against the window frame in a favorite attitude,
glanced across at Percy and the spinster as he asked, slowly: "Did she
say anything about me?"

Cora looked up in genuine surprise. "About you? No; why should she?"

"I mean," he said, "did she