Until then good-day to
you."

Thorndyke seized his hand and shook it.

"I don't know how to thank you, Liston! You're the prince of good
fellows. And I haven't deserved it--I know that."

He strode away. If he could only have seen the look "the prince of good
fellows" cast after him!

"'You don't know how to thank me,'" he thought, with sneering scorn.
"You fool! You blind, conceited, besotted fool! 'When I recall Lucy West
you wonder I don't hate you!' Was there ever a time, my perfumed
coxcomb, when I did not hate you? And you'll reward me, will you? Yes, I
swear you shall, but not in that way. Poor little girl! how young she
is, how pretty, and how innocent. She has had her fool's paradise for
three weeks--it ends to-day."

CHAPTER XI.

GONE.

Laurence Thorndyke strode rapidly back over the sands to where Norine
stood. She had not gone into the house, she was leaning against a green
mound, her hands hanging listlessly before her, the white, startled
change on her face still. Laurence was going away--in an aimless sort of
manner she kept repeating these words over and over, Laurence was going
away!

"I've made a devil of a mess of it," thought Mr. Thorndyke, gnawing his
mustache with gloomy ferocity. "What an unmitigated ass I have been in
this business! Liston's right--a mock marriage is no joke. I can make my
escape from her now, but the truth's got to be told, and that soon. And
what is to hinder her taking her revenge and blowing me sky-high, as I
deserve? One whisper of this affair, and Darcy disinherits me, Helen
jilts me, and then--good Heaven above! what a fool I have been."

Yes, Mr. Thorndyke had been a fool, and was repenting in sackcloth and
ashes. To gratify a passing fancy for a pretty face may be a very
pleasing thing--to take revenge upon a man who has interfered with one's
little plans, may also be a pleasing thing, but to cut off one's own
nose to spite one's own face, is something one is apt to regret
afterwards. It was Mr. Thorndyke's case. He had taken Richard Gilbert's
bride from him at the very altar, as one may say, and he had gloated
over his vengeance, but what was to hinder Norine Bourdon from rising,
strong in her wrongs and betrayal, and ruining him for life? She was the
gentlest, the most yielding of human beings now, and she loved him; but
is it not those whom we have once loved best, we learn afterwards to
hate most bitterly? He had cruelly, shamefully wronged and d