would be about the worst
reputation which you could carry through life. Believe me that I wish
you well, Diana, and be ruled by me."

"I will," she answered, with a kind of despairing resignation. "It
seems very dreary to go back to England to face the world all alone.
But I will do as you tell me."

She did not express any sympathy for her father, then languishing under
arrest, whereby she proved herself very wicked and unwomanly, no doubt.
But neither womanly virtues nor Christian graces are wont to flourish
in the school in which Diana Paget had been reared. She obeyed
Valentine Hawkehurst to the letter, without any sentimental
lamentations whatever. Her scanty possessions were collected, and
neatly packed, in little more than an hour. At three o'clock she lay
down in her tawdry little bed-chamber to take what rest she might in
the space of two hours. At six she stood by Valentine Hawkehurst on the
platform of the railway station, with her face hidden by a brown gauze
veil, waiting till the train was wade ready to start.

It was after she was seated in the carriage that she spoke for the
first time of her father.

"Is it likely to go very hard with him?" she asked.

"I hope not. We must try to pull him through it as well as we can. The
charge may break down at the first examination. Good bye."

"Good bye, Valentine."

They had just time to shake hands before the train moved off. Another
moment and Miss Paget and her fellow-passengers were speeding towards
Liege.

Mr. Hawkehurst drew his hat over his eyes as he walked away from the
station.

"The world will seem very dull and empty to me without her," he said to
himself. "I have done an unselfish thing for once in my life. I wonder
whether the recording angel will carry that up to my credit, and
whether the other fellow will blot out any of the old score in
consideration of this one little bit of self-sacrifice."

BOOK THE THIRD.

HEAPING UP RICHES.

CHAPTER I.

A FORTUNATE MARRIAGE.

Eleven years had passed lightly enough over the glossy raven locks of
Mr. Philip Sheldon. There are some men with whom Time deals gently, and
he was one of them. The hard black eyes had lost none of their fierce
brightness; the white teeth flashed with all their old brilliancy; the
complexion, which had always been dusky of hue, was perhaps a shade or
two darker; and the fierce black eyes seemed all the blacker by reason
of the purple tinge beneath t