oman would not have made all those anxious pilgrimages to
the door and been so upset when she found it still locked and nobody
there to meet her.

Well, this was a stroke of good fortune at all events; for if by any
chance the woman did not return there would at least be the satisfaction
of discovering----A sound interrupted: a cat's mew to the life. And from
the shadow of a thick furze hedge on the Common side of the lane it was
answered.

"Yes, I am here," a shrill, eager voice called out in a sharp, keen
whisper. "Oh, come quickly or I shall go insane!"

Almost instantly there was a rustle of silken garments, a patter of
footsteps, the swift moving of a figure across the lonely lane, followed
by the rattle and click of a key in a spring lock, the creak of an
in-swung gate moving upon its hinges, and with these things the sound of
an excited man whispering warningly, "Sh-h-h!" as the woman swept down
upon him in a state bordering on absolute hysteria.

"Oh, if you could but know what agonies I have suffered, what horrors
of suspense I have endured!" she said in a wailing sort of whisper, "I
feared that you might not be able to come, after I have risked so much
to be here; but when I heard the cat's mew, I wonder that I did not
scream."

And again the man's whispered "Sh-h-h!" sounded, but fuller than ever of
excitement and fear.

But Cleek scarcely heard it. Other and more startling things were
claiming his thoughts. A scent of violets was in his nostrils; a sting
of bitter recollection was in his memory. What was it the dying Common
keeper had said? "All shiny pale green satin, sir, with sparklin' things
on her bosom, and smellin' like a field of voylits in the month of May!"

He did not need Ailsa Lorne to point her out to him after this. He knew
without anybody telling him; knew in that first moment, as surely as he
ever lived to know in moments yet to come, that this veiled and
night-hidden woman who stood there by the garden door keeping tryst with
a man was she who had been out on the Common last night: Sir Philip
Clavering's wife!

And the man she was meeting, this crafty fellow who hung back in the
shadow of the solid gate, who and what was he? What part was his in this
grim riddle of death?

It was Lady Clavering herself who gave the answer.

"Oh, it is so easy to say that," she went on, answering his warning
"Sh-h-h" in a whisper that was shrill with agony and despair, "but the
dread of shriekin