replied to her requests
for money, but now he'll think she is driven into a corner, and will fix
her up once and for all."

"Do you think that Wrent is Vrain?"

"Good Lord! no!" replied Link, staring. "What put that into your head?"

Lucian immediately told about the supposed connection between Vrain and
Wrent, but, suppressing that it was Lydia's or Ferruci's idea, based his
supposition on the fact of the resemblance between the two men. Link
heard the theory with scorn, and scouted the idea that the two men could
be one and the same.

"I've seen Vrain," said he. "The old man is as mad as a March hare and
as silly as a child. He's in his dotage, and could not possibly carry
out such a plan. But we can easily learn the truth."

"From whom?" asked Lucian.

"Ah, Mr. Denzil, you are not so clever as you think yourself," scoffed
Link. "Why, from Mrs. Clear, to be sure. She visited at Jersey Street,
and saw Wrent, and as Vrain was then with her in the character of her
husband, she'll be able to tell us if they are two men or one person."

"You are right, Link. I never thought of that."

"He! he! Then I can still teach you something," replied Link, in high
good humour at having for once scored off the too clever barrister, and
forthwith went off to see Mrs. Clear.

How this interview with that lady sped, or what she told him, he refused
to reveal to Lucian; but its result was that a cypher appeared in the
agony column of the _Daily Telegraph_, calling upon Wrent to meet her in
the Silent House in Pimlico, under the penalty of her telling the police
all she knew if he did not come. In the same issue of the paper in which
this message appeared there was a paragraph stating that Mrs. Vrain had
been arrested at Dover.

CHAPTER XXX

WHO FELL INTO THE TRAP?

However closely one may study the fair sex, there is no understanding
them in the least. No one can say how a woman will act in a given
situation; for feminine actions are based less on logical foundations
than on the emotion of the moment.

Diana had never liked Lydia; when the American girl became her
stepmother she hated her, and not only said as much but showed in her
every action that she believed what she said. She declared that she
would be glad to see Lydia deprived of her money and put into jail! The
punishment would be no more than she deserved.

Yet when these things came to pass; when, by the discovery that Vrain
yet lived, Lydia lost her