gone suddenly out of Hamilton Burton. The
eyes that stared into the blaze wore, for the first time, a trace of
that fatigue and distress which portraits show in the eyes looking out
from St. Helena. Mary was gone; gone with his enemy to fight under his
enemy's colors! Her motive bewildered him. What was this love that so
powerfully impelled her to desert her own blood? Suddenly his mind
flashed back to a kitchen tableau of a small girl breaking into a sudden
tempest of tears, and a boy saying, "I mean to see that Mary gets
whatever she wants out of life." Then quite irrelevantly a fragment of
verse leaped into his memory and prickled it with irritation.

"The Emperor there in his box of state, looked grave
as though he had just then seen,
The red flags fly from the city gates, where his eagles
of bronze had been."

His gaze dropped to the white fur of the rug and abstractedly he picked
up his sister's riding-crop and one glove. She had dropped them when
Jefferson Edwardes placed the ring on her finger. Hamilton turned the
things over in his hand and a groan escaped him. Then suddenly that mood
vanished. He rose and paced the floor like a lion lashing itself into
fury, and his eyes were fiercely tawny as he paced.

Well, she had chosen. One thing remained possible. The man responsible
for this greatest sorrow and humiliation with which he had ever been
visited should pay in full the score of reprisal.

With an abrupt impulse he sent for Paul and he was still pacing the room
with quick, nervous strides when his brother arrived. The younger man's
face was haggard and he cast a quick glance of trepidation about the
room.

"Where's Mary?" he demanded, and Hamilton wheeled on him with eyes that
were scarcely sane.

"Gone!" he barked out. "Gone with that rat, Edwardes. That's one of the
things your whim has cost so far--your baby-doll--your toy-woman!"

With a sudden cry that came from his heart, Paul dropped into a chair
and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook to his
convulsive sobbing, and after a moment Hamilton went over and laid a
hand on his shoulder.

"Forgive me, little brother," he said softly. "After all, Edwardes was
the real reason. Edwardes with his damned self-righteousness! Mary flew
virtuously to his standards. She is no longer my sister, Paul."

But Paul rose with his face full of pleading. He talked rapidly,
excitedly, like a frightened child.

"Hamilton, she