me, that Miss
Thornton was discovered in the drawing-room that night weeping bitterly,
but if so, I venture to assert her tears were those of anger--the tears
of a spoilt child. However, the point is not what I think, but what
Williams thought. He left the Thorntons' house firmly convinced that he
had wholly failed in his mission and succeeded only in making the woman
he loved hate him. But as he lay awake brooding over the situation the
possibility presented itself that the girl might go to Forbes with the
story and assert her loyalty by offering to marry him then and there.
Such things had happened before. As he thought it over, the possibility
became a fear, and the fear a resolution to protect the girl, not only
against Forbes, but if necessary against herself. The step he took was
theoretically quite as impossible as his original action. But to attempt
the impossible is sometimes to achieve it.

Early the next morning Williams looked up Pierce & Butler, the attorneys
who had represented Mrs. Forbes in the divorce proceedings, obtained her
address, and straightway called upon the lady herself. His interview was
short, but at its close he made another extraordinary move. He
telegraphed Meyer that the East Broadway business was to be closed
within twenty-four hours. Seeing that he had not up to that time made
any adequate examination of the title, his action must have seemed
somewhat rash to his clerks--especially as he spent most of the
intervening hours, not at the Register's office, but in the building of
the green lamps on Mulberry Street known as Police Headquarters.

As a result of this, the first callers at Williams' offices on the
following morning were afforded singular accommodations. One of them was
stationed behind the portieres, another was supplied with a seat in a
closet, and another was ensconced in a coat-cupboard.

Then Williams sat down at the big table in the Title-closing room and
waited for Meyer and the other parties to the purchase and sale of the
property. They came promptly.

Meyer arrived first, accompanied by Jacobs, his confidential clerk, for
that prudent Hebrew never did anything without one of his own people
being present as a witness; then Mr. Winter, the real estate broker,
dropped in, and when finally Mr. August Stein, Attorney-at-law,
introduced himself and his client Mrs. Forbes. Williams showed no
surprise that Mr. Stein's client did not in any way resemble the Mrs.
Forbes he