est her.

Presently she took up the letters, and then all her indifference
vanished, the love light died from her eyes, the smile from her lips.
She knew the handwriting. One of those notes was from Allan Lyster.

She hastily opened it, and, as she read, all the color faded from her
sweet face. The folly and sin of her ignorant girlhood were finding her
out.

"I have but just returned from abroad," he wrote, "where I have been for
more than two years, and I am completely overwhelmed by the intelligence
that awaited me. You are married, Marion! You, who promised so
faithfully to be my wife. You, whose letters to me contain that promise
given over and over again. It is too late to ask what this treachery
means. I have by me the letter you wrote, asking for your freedom, and I
have the copy of mine absolutely refusing it. I told you then that I
should hold you to your promise, and you have disregarded my words.

"Marion, I must have compensation. It is useless talking to one like you
of love. You throw aside the poor artist for the rich lord. You must pay
me in your own coin, in what you value most--money. You have wronged me
as your promised husband. I had some right to your fortune, as your
duped and deserted lover. That right still remains. I claim some portion
of what ought to have been all mine.

"I am in immediate and urgent want of a thousand pounds. That is very
little for one who ought, as your husband, to be at this moment the
master of Hanton Hall and its rich domain. However, for a time, that
will content me; when I want another I will come to you for it. I will
not call at your house; you can send me a check, bank note, or what you
will.

"I do not wish to seem harsh, but it is better to tell you at once that
if you refuse any money request of mine at any time I shall immediately
commence proceedings against you. I shall bring an action for breach of
promise of marriage, and all England will cry shame on the false,
mercenary woman who abandoned a poor lover, to whom her troth was
plighted, in order to marry a rich lord. All England shall despise you.
For your child's sake, I counsel you to avoid an exposure."

She read those terrible words over and over again. Suddenly the whole
plot grew clear to her. It was for this they had schemed and plotted.
Not for love of her, but to make money out of her, to trade upon her
weakness and folly, stain her character, her fair name, her happiness,
the love of her h