nk badly of me. Falconer, I have made
a clean breast of it--I'm in your hands. I'm--I'm at your mercy. I
appeal to you"--he stretched out his white, shapely hands--"you have a
child of your own: she's as dear to you as mine is to me--I've watched
you to-night, and I've seen you look at her as she moved about and
talked and sang, with the look that my eyes wear when they rest on my
boy. I am at your mercy--not only mine, but my son's future--"

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and drew a long breath.

Falconer leant back and smoked contemplatively, with a coolness, an
indifference to the other's emotion which Sir Stephen found well-nigh
maddening.

"Yes," said Falconer, after a pause, "I suppose your house of cards
would come down with a crash if I opened my mouth say, at breakfast
to-morrow morning, and told--well, all I know of the great Sir Stephen
Orme when he bore the name of Black Steve. Even you, with all you
colossal assurance, could not face it or outlive it. And as for the
boy--it would settle his hash now and forever. A word from me would do
it, eh, Orme? And upon my soul I don't know why I shouldn't say it!
I've had it in my mind, I've kept it as a sweet morsel for a good many
years. Yes, I've been looking forward to it. I've been waiting for the
'physiological moment,' as I think they call it; and it strikes me that
it has arrived."

Sir Stephen's face grew strained, and a curious expression crept into
it.

"If you ask me why you should not, I can give you no reason," he said.
"If you were poor I should offer you money--more, a great deal more
than I received for the old claim; but I can see that that would not
tempt you to forego your revenge. Falconer, you are not poor; your
daughter wears diamonds--"

Falconer shrugged his shoulders.

"No, I'm not in want of money. You're not the only man who has had a
change of luck. No, you can't bribe me; even if I were hard up instead
of rather flush, as I am, I wouldn't take a hundred thousand pounds for
my revenge."

Sir Stephen rose. There was an ominous change in his manner. His
nervousness and apprehension seemed to have suddenly left him, and in
its place was a terrible, stony calmness, an air of inflexible
determination.

"Good!" he said; and his voice had changed also, changed from its
faltering tone of appeal to one of steadfast resolution, the steadiness
of desperation. "I have made my appeal to you, Falconer, and I gather
that I have failed