duct you to your room," said Lucian.

Together they moved towards the door; there he lifted his hat, with
profound courtesy, and said in a very audible tone: "Good-night, Miss
Weir; I will call to-morrow noon; pleasant dreams."

"To-morrow noon," she echoed.

As she watched his retreating figure, another passed her; a man who,
meeting her eye, lifted _his_ hat and passed out.

"He again!" whispered the girl to herself; "how very strange."

Alone in her room, the face of this man looked at her again, and
sitting down, she said, wearily: "Who is he? what does he mean? His
name--I'll look at the card."

Taking it from her pocket, she read aloud: Clarence Vaughan, M. D.,
No. 430 B---- street.

"Clarence Vaughan, M. D.," she repeated. "What did he mean? I must
tell Lucian to-morrow; to-night I am too weary to think. Search for
me, John Arthur; find me if you can! To-morrow--what will it bring, I
wonder?"

Weary one, rest, for never again will you sleep so innocently, so free
from care as now. Sleep well, nor dream!

She slept. Of the three who had been brought into contact thus
strangely, Madeline slept most soundly and dreamed the brighter
dreams.

It was the last ray of her sunlight; when the day dawned, her night
began.

CHAPTER V.

A SHREWD SCHEME.

An elegant apartment, one of a suite in a magnificent block such as
are the pride of our great cities.

Softest carpets, of most exquisite pattern; curtains of richest lace;
lambrequins of costly texture; richly-embroidered and velvet-covered
sleepy-hollows and lounging chairs; nothing stiff, nothing that did
not betoken abandonment to ease and pleasure; downy cushions; rarest
pictures; loveliest statuettes; finest bronzes; delicate vases;
magnificent, full length mirrors, a bookcase, itself a rare work of
art, containing the best works of the best authors, all in the richest
of bindings--nothing here that the most refined and cultivated taste
could disapprove, and yet everything bespoke the sybarite, the
voluptuary. A place wherein to forget that the world held aught save
beauty; a place for luxurious revelry, and repose filled with lotus
dreams.

Such was the bachelor abode of Lucian Davlin, as the glowing gas
lights revealed it on the dark night of the arrival of this gentleman
in the city.

Moving restlessly about, as one who was perfectly familiar with all
this glowing richness, only because movement was a necessity to her;
trailing her ri