remained after the service to inspect the
monuments; and beside a recumbent effigy--the effigy in alabaster
whose features Paula had wiped with her handkerchief when there with
Somerset--he beheld the man it had been his business to find. Abner
Power went up and touched this person, who was Dare, on the shoulder.

'Mr. Power--so it is!' said the youth. 'I have not seen you since we met
in Carlsruhe.'

'You shall see all the more of me now to make up for it. Shall we walk
round the church?'

'With all my heart,' said Dare.

They walked round; and Abner Power began in a sardonic recitative: 'I
am a traveller, and it takes a good deal to astonish me. So I neither
swooned nor screamed when I learnt a few hours ago what I had suspected
for a week, that you are of the house and lineage of Jacob.' He flung a
nod towards the canopied tombs as he spoke.--'In other words, that you
are of the same breed as the De Stancys.'

Dare cursorily glanced round. Nobody was near enough to hear their
words, the nearest persons being two workmen just outside, who were
bringing their tools up from the vault preparatively to closing it.

Having observed this Dare replied, 'I, too, am a traveller; and neither
do I swoon nor scream at what you say. But I assure you that if you
busy yourself about me, you may truly be said to busy yourself about
nothing.'

'Well, that's a matter of opinion. Now, there's no scarlet left in my
face to blush for men's follies; but as an alliance is afoot between my
niece and the present Sir William, this must be looked into.'

Dare reflectively said 'O,' as he observed through the window one of
the workmen bring up a candle from the vault and extinguish it with his
fingers.

'The marriage is desirable, and your relationship in itself is of no
consequence,' continued the elder, 'but just look at this. You have
forced on the marriage by unscrupulous means, your object being only too
clearly to live out of the proceeds of that marriage.'

'Mr. Power, you mock me, because I labour under the misfortune of having
an illegitimate father to provide for. I really deserve commiseration.'

'You might deserve it if that were all. But it looks bad for my
niece's happiness as Lady De Stancy, that she and her husband are to be
perpetually haunted by a young chevalier d'industrie, who can forge a
telegram on occasion, and libel an innocent man by an ingenious device
in photography. It looks so bad, in short, that, adva