orrow. We have quarrelled, but she still cares for me, and if I
can sail on the same steamer, we will yet make up and be happy."

"At what time does this steamer start?"

"At nine in the morning."

"Well, you shall leave this house at eight. If you go directly to the
steamer you will be in time."

"But--but," I panted, "I have made no arrangements. I shall have to go
to my lodgings, write letters, get money. I ought to be there at this
moment. Have you no mercy on a man who never did you wrong, and only
asks to quit you and forget the precious hour you have made him lose?"

"I am sorry," he said, "it is certainly quite unfortunate, but the
door will not be opened before eight. There is really no one in the
house to unlock it."

"And do you mean to say," I cried aghast, "that you could not open
that door if you would, that you are locked in here as well as I, and
that I must remain here till morning, no matter how I feel or you
feel?"

"Will you not take a cigar?" he asked.

Then I began to see how useless it was to struggle, and visions of
Dora leaning on the steamer rail with that serpent whispering soft
entreaties in her ear came rushing before me, till I could have wept
in my jealous chagrin.

"It is cruel, base, devilish," I began. "If you had the excuse of
wanting money, and took this method of wringing my all from me, I
could have patience, but to entrap and keep me here for nothing, when
my whole future happiness is trembling in the balance, is the work of
a fiend and--" I made a sudden pause, for a strange idea had struck
me.

CHAPTER III.

What if this man, these men and this woman, were in league with him
whose rivalry I feared, and whom I had intended to supplant on the
morrow. It was a wild surmise, but was it any wilder than to believe I
was held here for a mere whim, a freak, a joke, as this bowing,
smiling man before me would have me believe?

Rising in fresh excitement, I struck my hand on the table. "You want
to keep me from going on the steamer," I cried. "That other wretch who
loves her has paid you--"

But that other wretch could not know that I was meditating any such
unusual scheme, as following him without a full day's warning. I
thought of this even before I had finished my sentence, and did not
need the blank astonishment in the face of the man before me to
convince me that I had given utterance to a foolish accusation. "It
would have been some sort of a motive for your actio