r me for what I have suffered all these years?"

"I don't suppose you cared much."

"Don't you? You never thought about me at all. I have cared this much,
John Rex--bah! the door is shut close enough--that I have spent a
fortune in hunting you down; and now I have found you, I will make you
suffer in your turn."

He laughed again, but uneasily. "How did you discover me?"

With a readiness which showed that she had already prepared an answer to
the question, she unlocked a writing-case, which was on the side table,
and took from it a newspaper. "By one of those strange accidents which
are the ruin of men like you. Among the papers sent to the overseer from
his English friends was this one."

She held out an illustrated journal--a Sunday organ of sporting
opinion--and pointed to a portrait engraved on the centre page. It
represented a broad-shouldered, bearded man, dressed in the fashion
affected by turfites and lovers of horse-flesh, standing beside a
pedestal on which were piled a variety of racing cups and trophies. John
Rex read underneath this work of art the name,

MR. RICHARD DEVINE, THE LEVIATHAN OF THE TURF.

"And you recognized me?"

"The portrait was sufficiently like you to induce me to make inquiries,
and when I found that Mr. Richard Devine had suddenly returned from a
mysterious absence of fourteen years, I set to work in earnest. I have
spent a deal of money, Jack, but I've got you!"

"You have been clever in finding me out; I give you credit for that."

"There is not a single act of your life, John Rex, that I do not know,"
she continued, with heat. "I have traced you from the day you stole out
of my house until now. I know your continental trips, your journeyings
here and there in search of a lost clue. I pieced together the puzzle,
as you have done, and I know that, by some foul fortune, you have stolen
the secret of a dead man to ruin an innocent and virtuous family."

"Hullo! hullo!" said John Rex. "Since when have you learnt to talk of
virtue?"

"It is well to taunt, but you have got to the end of your tether now,
Jack. I have communicated with the woman whose son's fortune you have
stolen. I expect to hear from Lady Devine in a day or so."

"Well--and when you hear?"

"I shall give back the fortune at the price of her silence!"

"Ho! ho! Will you?"

"Yes; and if my husband does not come back and live with me quietly, I
shall call the police."

John Rex sprang up. "Who will belie