sight
of her uncle they fell away, and she started back.

"You!" she exclaimed. "Uncle Phineas! Here in London!"

He saw the signs stamped into her face of the evil times through which
she had passed, and the more immediate traces of the crisis which lay so
close behind her. He held out both his hands, and stepped quickly toward
her. He was only just in time to save her from falling.

"I came," she faltered, "to get money from Mr. Deane to send you a
cable, to catch a steamer to come back to America. I have got it!" she
cried suddenly, her voice rising almost to a hysterical shriek. "I have
got it! It is here! See!"

She dragged something from the front of her dress--a roll of papers, and
held them out. She was swaying upon her feet now, and Phineas Duge, his
arm around her waist, half led, half carried her to a chair. Littleson,
who had darted out of the room, came back with a glass of water. All
three men stood around her. The papers were there upon her knee, but her
fingers seemed wound around them with some unnatural force. Her burning
eyes were fixed upon her uncle's.

"Take them!" she begged. "Read them! Tell me that it is all right. Tell
me that you will keep your promise."

He took them gently away. A single glance at the sheet of foolscap was
enough.

"You are a wonderful child, Virginia," he said calmly. "It is as you
say. These are the papers which Stella stole. I blamed you for the loss
of them too hardly, but you shall never be sorry that you succeeded in
regaining them."

She drew a queer little breath of relief, and leaned back in her chair.
She was still as pale as death, but the terrible strain had gone
from her face.

"I snatched them up," she murmured, "and ran. I am sure they will come
after me. And Vine--I think that that man will kill Vine. His fingers
were upon his throat when I left."

"You brought them," Phineas Duge asked calmly, "from Norris Vine's
rooms?"

She had no time to answer. The door was opened. Norris Vine stood there
on the threshold. He looked in upon the little group and shrugged his
shoulders.

"I am too late, then," he said slowly.

Phineas Duge thrust his hand into the flames and held the papers there.
Norris Vine seemed for a moment as though he would have sprung forward,
but Littleson intervened, and Deane himself.

"They shall burn!" Duge cried. "If you are really the altruist you claim
to be, Mr. Vine, you need not fear their destruction. We are changing