o me for an explanation, knowing that I was an
accessory before the fact. Indeed, I lent Charley the sinews of war in
the shape of a blank check, which I see this morning he has filled up
for a thousand--just like his modesty. Well, I hope they'll amuse
themselves! Bruce has never been near me. Suicide is the most charitable
suggestion I've heard yet; but coroners are silent, and the Thames, if
it is conscious of that unlucky though disagreeable man, keeps his
secret so far!"

Then he went on to give me more particulars of the _escapade_. It seems
that Miss Raymond had gone out to walk alone, after luncheon, and that
nothing more was heard of her till dinner-time, when a note was found on
her dressing-table, addressed to her aunt, containing the intelligence
of her flight with Forrester, and a little piece of ready-made
penitence--the first for all whom it might concern, the second for her
father.

That placid Lord Ullin received the news by telegraph when he was well
into his second rubber at the "Travelers;" he put the message into his
pocket without remark, and won the rubber before he rose. It has been
reported that he was somewhat absent during its progress, so much so as
to rough his partner's strongest suit; but this I conceive to have been
an after-thought of some one's, or a _canard_ of the club. Impavid as
the Horatian model-man--(just in all his _dealings_, and tenacious of
the odd trick)--I can not imagine the convulsion of nature which would
have made him jeopardize by any sin of omission or commission the
winning of the long odds.

He found Bruce that night, and told him all. He never would give an
account of that interview: it must have been a curious one.

_"xunomosan gar, ontes echtistoi to prin,
pur kai thalassa--"_

Fancy the well-iced conventionalities of the one brought in contact with
the other's savage temperament, maddened by baffled desires and the
sense of shameful defeat.

Before noon the next day it was announced to Lady Catharine, at Kerton
Manor, that Bruce was waiting for her in the drawing-room. It was with a
diffidence and sense of guilt very strange to her pure, straightforward
nature that she obeyed the summons.

His back was to the door as she entered.

"I can not tell you how sorry I am," she began.

Bruce turned toward her his ghastly face, ravaged and deformed by
passion and sleeplessness, like a cane-brake in the Western Indies over
which a tornado has passed