at the offer--has spent vast sums preparing
to employ it. His money paid for the recent strike at the Westminster works
of the Gas Light and Coke Company, by means of which Victor was able to
smuggle a round number of his creatures into its service. His money has
corrupted servants employed in Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament, in
the homes of the nobility, even in Buckingham Palace itself, men ready at a
given signal secretly to turn on gas jets in remote corners and flood the
buildings with the very breath of Death itself. And that signal was to have
been given to-night. Well, it will not be."

"But could any scheme be more grotesquely diabolical? Do you ask more proof
of the man's madness? Do you require more excuse for my permitting you to
be deceived by Victor for a few weeks, rather than wreck our plans to
frustrate his, when all the while Karslake and I were near you, watching
over you, learning to love you--he in his fashion, I as your father--and
both ready at all times to die in your protection, if it had ever come to
that?"

Lanyard had drawn so near that only a few inches separated them, and had
his voice in such control that at three paces' distance a vague and
inarticulate murmur at most might have been heard; but in Sofia's hearing
his accents rang with passionate sincerity, persuading her against the
reason which would have rejected his indictment of Victor as too fantastic,
too imaginative, and too hopelessly overdrawn to be given credence. She
believed him, knowing in her heart that he believed his statements to the
last word; and knowing more, that he was surely what he represented himself
to be, her father.

Inscrutable the processes of human hearts: even as from the very first
Sofia had instinctively yet unconsciously recognized the intrinsic falsity
of Victor's pretensions, so now she perceived the integral honesty that
informed Lanyard's every word and nuance of expression, and accepted him
without further inquisition.

To his insistent "Have I made you understand?" she returned a wan wraith of
a smile, pitiful with entreaty, while one of her hands found the way to
his.

"I think so," she replied in halting apology--"at least, I believe you. But
be a little patient with me. It is all so new and strange, what you tell
me, it's hard at first to grasp, there's so much I must accept on faith
alone, so much I don't understand ..."

"I know." Lanyard pressed her hand gently.

"But try to