d and acted upon by hastening to say:

"Oh, yes! yes! read it at once! I could not sleep now without first
hearing it."

"Very well, then," said the lawyer, as he unfolded the paper and
prepared to peruse it.

The confession of Horace Blondelle need not be given in full here. A
synopsis of it will serve our purpose.

As the son of a wicked old nobleman and a worthless young ballet dancer,
he had been brought up in the very worst school of morality.

His mother closed her career in a hospital. His father died at an
advanced age, leaving him a large legacy.

His beauty, his wit, and his money enabled him to insinuate himself into
the rather lax society of fashionable watering places and other public
resorts.

He had married three times. First he married a certain Lady Riordon, the
wealthy widow of an Irish knight, and the mother of Raphael, who became
his step-son. He soon squandered this lady's fortune, and broke her
heart.

After her death he joined himself to a band of smugglers trading between
the French and English coast, and consorted with them until he had made
money for a fashionable campaign among the watering places. He went to
Scarborough, where he met and married the fair young Scotch widow Rosa
Douglass.

He lived with her until he had spent all her money, and swindled her
infant out of his inheritance, and then he had robbed her of her jewels
and deserted her.

About the same time a smuggling craft, unsuspected as such by the
authorities, had entered the port of Norfolk, sailing under the British
flag.

Mr. Horace Blondelle, going to take passage in her, recognized the
captain and the crew as his own old confederates.

As he was quite ready for new adventures, he joined them then and there.
The ship sailed the next day. And the next week it was wrecked on the
coast of Virginia.

The lives of the captain and crew, and also the money and jewels, the
silks and spirits they had on board, were all saved. They reached the
land in safety.

There a new scheme was formed in the busy brain of Mr. Blondelle.
Accident had revealed to him the fact that the little Gentiliska, the
orphan daughter of a dead comrade, was the heiress of a great Virginian
manor, long unclaimed. He made up his mind to go and look up the estate,
marry the heiress, and claim her rights.

Without revealing his whole plan to his companions, he persuaded them to
accompany him to the neighborhood.

There is a freemasonry among