ealing our engagement from him, he would never
forgive either of us."

At this moment a step was heard passing along the corridor outside.

It caused the two unseen inmates of the parlor to shrink into silence,
and even when it had passed out of hearing it caused them, in renewing
their conversation, to speak only in the lowest tones, so that Cora
could no longer catch a word of their speech.

She would before this have risen and retired to her own room; but she
was afraid of making a noise, and consequently causing a scene.

Were those two, her Uncle Fabian and Mrs. Stillwater, only secretly
engaged? Secretly engaged? But whoever heard of a betrothed lover
providing a home for his betrothed bride to live in before marriage! And
then, again, was her Uncle Fabian really so dependent on his father as
he had represented to Rose? Cora had always understood that he had a
quarter share in the great business, and that Clarence had an eighth.
And, worse than all, had they been so deceived as to the condition of
Rose that, if she was Mrs. Stillwater at all, she was the widow and not
the wife of Captain Stillwater, since she was engaged to be married, if
not already married, to Mr. Fabian Rockharrt?

Altogether the affair seemed a blinding and confusing tissue of
falsehood and deception that amazed and repulsed the mind of the girl.

Bewildered by the mystery, lulled by the hum of voices whose words she
could not distinguish, fanned by the breeze from the harbor, and calmed
by the darkness, the wearied girl sank back into her resting chair,
closed her eyes, and lost the sequence of her thoughts in dreams--from
which she presently sank into dreamless sleep, which lasted until she
was awakened by the noise of the hotel servants moving about on their
morning duties, opening windows, rapping at doors to call up travelers
for early trains, dragging along trunks, and so on.

At breakfast Cora watched Mr. Fabian and Rose, because she could not
help doing so, and she certainly discovered signs of a secret
understanding between them--signs so slight that they would have been
unnoticed by any one who had not the key to the mystery. But how
sickening and depressing was all this! Rose Flowers, or Stillwater, or
Rockharrt--whichever name she could legally claim--was a fraud. Mr.
Fabian Rockharrt was another fraud. Those two were secretly engaged or
secretly married.

After breakfast the party were ready for their journey Then came the