and saintly beauty of face that it must be seen to be believed.
And eyes--Lord! the glory of her eyes! They are eyes that would lead a
man into hell and make him believe it heaven,

"'Love doth to her eyes repair
To help him of his blindness.'"

Sir Richard watched him, displeasure growing in his face. "So!" he said
at last. "Is that the reason?"

"The reason of what?" quoth Mr. Caryll, recalled from his sweet rapture.

"The reason of these fresh qualms of yours. The reason of all this
sympathy for Ostermore; this unwillingness to perform the sacred duty
that is yours."

"Nay--on my soul, you do me wrong!" cried Mr. Caryll indignantly. "If
aught had been needed to spur me on, it had been my meeting with this
lady. It needed that to make me realize to the bitter full the wrong my
Lord Ostermore has done me in getting me; to make me realize that I am a
man without a name to offer any woman."

But Sir Richard, watching him intently, shook his head and fetched a
sigh of sorrow and disdain. "Pshaw, Justin! How we befool ourselves! You
think it is not so; you try to think it is not so; but to me it is very
plain. A woman has arisen in your life, and this woman, seen but once or
twice, unknown a week or so ago, suffices to eclipse the memory of your
mother and turns your aim in life--the avenging of her bitter wrongs--to
water. Oh, Justin, Justin! I had thought you stronger."

"Your conclusions are all wrong. I swear they are wrong!"

Sir Richard considered him sombrely. "Are you sure--quite, quite sure?"

Mr. Caryll's eyes fell, as the doubt now entered his mind for the first
time that it might be indeed as Sir Richard was suggesting. He was not
quite sure.

"Prove it to me, Justin," Everard pleaded. "Prove it by abandoning this
weakness where my Lord Ostermore is concerned. Remember only the wrong
he has done. You are the incarnation of that wrong, and by your hand
must he be destroyed." He rose, and caught the younger man's hands again
in his own, forced Mr. Caryll to confront him. "He shall know when the
time comes whose hand it was that pulled him down; he shall know the
Nemesis that has lain in wait for him these thirty years to smite him at
the end. And he shall taste hell in this world before he goes to it in
the next. It is God's own justice, boy! Will you be false to the duty
that lies before you? Will you forget your mother and her sufferings
because you have looked into the eyes of t