her of a mother's love, and
you--you old vampire--you would bury her alive! She shall know yet her
dead mother's love, and--her brutal father's shame!"

Before the excited woman could select another period of flowing
invective from her thronging emotions, the gaunt old scholar had pushed
her out into the hall and slid a bolt upon his door, with a vicious
click. There were certain qualms of fear already unsettling his
triumphant calmness.

While Justine Delande, with flaming cheeks, sprang up the stair, and
barricaded herself with the sobbing heiress, the old man, his eyes
gleaming with all the conscious pride of tyranny, seated himself and
indited a note directed to

PROFESSOR ALARIC HOBBS, (of Waukesha University, U. S. A.), ROYAL
VICTORIA HOTEL, ST. HELIERS, JERSEY.

He had already dismissed from his mind the sorrows of the orphaned
niece--he cared not for the spirited onslaught of the Swiss woman--and
he rejoiced in his heart at the fact of Douglas Fraser's departure to
gather up the loose ends of his dead brother's great fortune. "It's a
vixenish baggage--this Swiss teacher! Hugh was right to bid me cut those
cords at once and forever between them! The girl shall have discipline,
and, that baggage, her mother, is well out of the world! I'll work
Hugh's will! She shall come under!" With a secret glee he ran over a
schedule of chapter headings upon Thibet, Tibet, Tubet--the land of
Bod--Bodyul or Alassa. He was drifting back into the dreamland of the
pedant, but a few hours deserted.

"This Yankee fellow has a keen wit! His ideas on the Ten Tribes are
wonderful! His life has been a study of the Mongolians, the Tartars,
and the history of the American Indians! I will be a bit decent to the
fellow, and I'll get at the meat of his knowledge! He's young and a
great chatterer, maybe, but a help to me. Body o' me! But to get there
myself--to Thibet.

"Ah!" sighed the old misanthrope, "I'm too old now! And Hugh has failed
me! Nothing from him. This sair blow cuts off the last hope! And no
educated men of Thibet ever travel! Blindness--blindness everywhere!"
he babbled on, while above him, two women, in an agonized leave-taking,
were silently sobbing in each other's arms, while the happy Swiss
servant made her boxes. Nadine Johnstone's utter wretchedness gave her
no sense of a loss by the hand of Death. For a father's love she had
never known, and her mother--a mystery!

The two women cowering together above the old