gone away broken-hearted. And
there, in my opinion, is the hussy who is the cause of it!"

With those words, she made me a low curtsey, and laid a small
photographic portrait on the desk at which I was sitting.

I looked at the photograph.

In an instant, my heart was beating wildly--my head turned giddy--the
housekeeper, the furniture, the walls of the room, all swayed and
whirled round me.

The portrait that had been found in my senior pupil's bedroom was the
portrait of Jeromette!

IX.

I HAD sent the housekeeper out of my study. I was alone, with the
photograph of the Frenchwoman on my desk.

There could surely be little doubt about the discovery that had burst
upon me. The man who had stolen his way into my house, driven by the
terror of a temptation that he dared not reveal, and the man who had
been my unknown rival in the by-gone time, were one and the same!

Recovering self-possession enough to realize this plain truth, the
inferences that followed forced their way into my mind as a matter of
course. The unnamed person who was the obstacle to my pupil's prospects
in life, the unnamed person in whose company he was assailed by
temptations which made him tremble for himself, stood revealed to me
now as being, in all human probability, no other than Jeromette. Had she
bound him in the fetters of the marriage which he had himself proposed?
Had she discovered his place of refuge in my house? And was the letter
that had been delivered to him of her writing? Assuming these questions
to be answered in the affirmative, what, in that case, was his "business
in London"? I remembered how he had spoken to me of his temptations, I
recalled the expression that had crossed his face when he recognized the
handwriting on the letter--and the conclusion that followed literally
shook me to the soul. Ordering my horse to be saddled, I rode instantly
to the railway-station.

The train by which he had traveled to London had reached the terminus
nearly an hour since. The one useful course that I could take, by way of
quieting the dreadful misgivings crowding one after another on my mind,
was to telegraph to Jeromette at the address at which I had last seen
her. I sent the subjoined message--prepaying the reply:

"If you are in any trouble, telegraph to me. I will be with you by the
first train. Answer, in any case."

There was nothing in the way of the immediate dispatch of my message.
And yet the hours passed, and no ans