ind scarcely realised that they would surely meet
again. At the end of the second year the thought had receded into an
almost indefinite past. She was beginning to feel that she had lived
two lives, and that this life had no direct or vital bearing upon her
previous existence, in which David had moved. Yet now and then the
perfume of the Egyptian garden, through which she had fled to escape
from tragedy, swept over her senses, clouded her eyes in the daytime,
made them burn at night.

At last she had come to meet and know Eglington. From the first moment
they met he had directed his course towards marriage. He was the man
of the moment. His ambition seemed but patriotism, his ardent and
overwhelming courtship the impulse of a powerful nature. As Lord
Windlehurst had said, he carried her off her feet, and, on a wave of
devotion and popular encouragement, he had swept her to the altar.

The Duchess held both her hands for a moment, admiring her, and,
presently, with a playful remark upon her unselfishness, left her alone
with Lord Windlehurst.

As they talked, his mask-like face became lighted from the brilliant
fire in the inquisitorial eyes, his lips played with topics of the
moment in a mordant fashion, which drew from her flashing replies.
Looking at her, he was conscious of the mingled qualities of three races
in her--English, Welsh, and American-Dutch of the Knickerbocker strain;
and he contrasted her keen perception and her exquisite sensitiveness
with the purebred Englishwomen round him, stately, kindly, handsome, and
monotonously intelligent.

"Now I often wonder," he said, conscious of, but indifferent to, the
knowledge that he and the brilliant person beside him were objects of
general attention--"I often wonder, when I look at a gathering like
this, how many undiscovered crimes there are playing about among us.
They never do tell--or shall I say, we never do tell?"

All day, she knew not why, Hylda had been nervous and excited. Without
reason his words startled her. Now there flashed before her eyes a room
in a Palace at Cairo, and a man lying dead before her. The light slowly
faded out of her eyes, leaving them almost lustreless, but her face was
calm, and the smile on her lips stayed. She fanned herself slowly, and
answered nonchalantly: "Crime is a word of many meanings. I read in the
papers of political crimes--it is a common phrase; yet the criminals
appear to go unpunished."

"There you are wrong,