it of my suspicions and opinion."

"What! and compromise your dead wife before a scandal-loving public?"

"Emil, if Anna could speak at this moment, I believe she would tell
the truth herself, and save that innocent and lovely child from a fate
which to her must seem worse than death," Mr. Goddard solemnly
asserted.

"Thank you--you are, to say the least, not very flattering to me in
your comparisons," angrily retorted Monsieur Correlli, as he sprang
from his chair and moved toward the door.

He stopped as he laid his hand upon the silver knob and turned a
white, vindictive face upon the other.

"Well, then," he said, between his white, set teeth, "since you have
determined to take this stand against me, it will not be agreeable for
us to meet as heretofore, and I feel compelled to ask you to vacate
these premises at your earliest convenience."

"Very well! I shall, of course, immediately comply with your request.
A few hours will suffice me to make the move you suggest," frigidly
responded Gerald Goddard; but he had grown ghastly white with wounded
pride and anger at being thus ignominiously turned out of the house
where for so many years he had reigned supreme.

Emil Correlli bowed as he concluded, and left the room without a word
in reply.

As the door closed after him Mr. Goddard sank back in his chair with a
heavy sigh, as he realized fully, for the first time, how entirely
alone in the world he was, and what a desolate future lay before him,
shorn, as he was, of home and friends and all the wealth which for so
long had paved a shining way for him through the world.

His head sank heavily upon his breast, and he sat thus for several
minutes absorbed in painful reflections.

He was finally aroused by the shutting of the street door, when,
looking up, he saw the new master of the house pass the window, and he
knew that henceforth he would be his bitter enemy.

He glanced wistfully around the beautiful room--the dearest in the
house to him; at the elegant cases of valuable books, every one of
which he himself had chosen and caused to be uniformly bound; at the
choice paintings in their costly frames upon the walls, and many of
which had been painted by his own hands; at the numerous pieces of
statuary and rare curios which he knew would never assume their
familiar aspect in any other place.

How could he ever make up his mind to dismantle that home-like spot
and bury his treasures in a close and gloomy