him now for three rounds."

"And so have I," added Colonel Le Grice.

Gilly sprang to his feet. For a moment he seemed disposed to brazen it
out; then he read his sentence in the face of those who had detected
and now judged him. There was no appeal: he was doomed. From
henceforth he was socially and morally dead, and, without a word, he
slunk away from the house.

The buzz of the ball-room soon caught up the ugly scandal, and tossed
it wildly from lip to lip. "Mr. Jillingham caught cheating at cards!"
Everyone said, of course, they had suspected it all along; now every
one knew it as a fact, except those most nearly concerned. To them it
came last. To Phillipa, whose heart it stabbed as with a knife, cut
through and through; then to Mrs. Purling, who, a little taken aback
by the sudden exodus of her guests, asked innocently what it meant,
upon which some one, without knowing who she was, told her the exact
truth.

Quite stunned by the terrible shock, dazed, terrified, was the
heiress, scarcely capable of comprehending what had occurred. Then
with a sad, scared face, motioning Phillipa on one side, who, equally
white and grief-stricken, would have helped her, she crept slowly
upstairs, feeling that at one blow the whole fabric of her social
repute was tumbled in the dust.

The lights were out, the play was over, the house still and silent,
when, with loud shrieks, Mrs. Purling's maid rushed to Phillipa's
room.

"Mrs. Purling, ma'am!--my mistress, she is dying! Come to her! She is
nearly gone!"

In truth, the poor old woman was in the extremest agony; it was quite
terrible to see her. She gasped as if for air; her whole frame jerked
and twitched with the violence of her convulsions; gradually her body
was drawn in a curve, like that of a tensely-strung bow.

The spasms abated, then recommenced; abated, then raged with increased
fury. But through it all she was conscious; she had even the power of
speech, and cried aloud again and again, with a bitter heart-wrung
cry, for "Harold! Harold!" the absent much-wronged son.

"The symptoms are those of tetanus," said the nearest medical
practitioner, who had been called in. He seemed fairly puzzled.
"Tetanus or--" He did not finish the sentence, because the single
word that was on his lips formed a serious charge against a person or
persons unknown. "But there is nothing to explain lock-jaw; while the
abatement of the symptoms points to--" Again he paused.

The mu