n had not been made. "The young lady
holds the winning cards," he had assured himself. "I will take her
orders before I get myself in too deep!" His "too deep" meant deep as
the grave.

And now Lucian had a new subject for conjecture. If Miss Payne
proposed to appoint for herself a guardian, who would she select? Who
had been caring for her during all these months? Was it man or woman?

The only information she had volunteered had been implied rather than
spoken. In answer to Miss Arthur's rather abrupt query at the
breakfast table, as to how she had managed to prosper so well in a
strange city where she had no friends, the girl had replied, with a
little laugh:

"I suppose it has never occurred to either yourself or Mr. Arthur that
I might have found out some of my mother's friends. I was put in
possession of my mother's journal on the very day that I ran away from
Oakley. I am not so friendless as you may think."

Lucian was again puzzled, but knowing the girl as he did, he was not
prepared to believe that a guardian, in the form of a lover, would
appear. He was now convinced that Cora, whom at first he had somewhat
doubted, was not for some unknown reason attempting to deceive him.

The Professor's story had corroborated hers, and given him, as he
expressed it, "a fresh point" in his game. But alas for Lucian! Every
fancied discovery only beguiled him farther and farther from the
truth, and rendered him more and more blind to the chains that were
being forged about him.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE DAYS PASS BY.

Several days passed and still Lucian Davlin had not found the much
wished for opportunity to converse with Madeline. Neither had he been
able to find Cora alone. Visit her room when he would, there was the
burly waiting-maid. Finally Cora had warned him, with some asperity,
that his "actions looked rather suspicious," and then he obeyed her
gentle hint and remained aloof.

Two days after the bestowal of Strong, the maid, upon the
not-too-grateful Cora, an angular, grenadier-looking female presented
herself at the servants' entrance, announcing that she was "the new
maid;" and she was installed as high priestess of Madeline's
apartments without loss of time.

The servants below stairs made comments, as servants will. Even Miss
Arthur, Percy, and Davlin agreed in calling the two maids,
respectively, "Grenadier" and "Griffin."

But only Cora knew that the two were better learned in the art of
spyi