rth."

Slow to love, deeply interested, baffled but unsatisfied, Reybold made
up his mind to cut his perplexity short by leaving the city for the
county of Fauquier. As he passed down the avenue late that afternoon,
he turned into E Street, near the theatre, to engage a carriage for his
expedition. It was a street of livery stables, gambling dens, drinking
houses, and worse; murders had been committed along its sidewalks. The
more pretentious _canaille_ of the city harbored there to prey on the
hotels close at hand and aspire to the chance acquaintance of
gentlemen. As Reybold stood in an archway of this street, just as the
evening shadows deepened above the line of sunset, he saw something
pass which made his heart start to his throat and fastened him to the
spot. Veiled and walking fast, as if escaping detection or pursuit, the
figure of Joyce Basil flitted over the pavement and disappeared in a
door about at the middle of this Alsatian quarter of the capital.

"What house is that?" he asked of a constable passing by, pointing to
the door she entered.

"Gambling den," answered the officer. "It used to be old Phil
Pendleton's."

Reybold knew the reputation of the house: a resort for the scions of
the old tidewater families, where hospitality thinly veiled the
paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of
Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the
dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast
forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch
whose villany she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the
thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro steward
unfastened a slide and peeped at Reybold knocking in the hall; and,
seeing him of respectable appearance, bowed ceremoniously as he let
down a chain and opened the door.

"Short cards in the front saloon," he said; "supper and faro back.
Chambers on the third floor. Walk up."

Reybold only tarried a moment at the gaming tables, where the silent,
monotonous deal from the tin box, the lazy stroke of the markers, and
the transfer of ivory "chips" from card to card of the sweat-cloth,
impressed him as the dullest form of vice he had ever found. Treading
softly up the stairs, he was attracted by the light of a door partly
ajar, and a deep groan, as of a dying person. He peeped through the
crack of the door and beheld Joyce Basil leaning over an old man, whose