satisfaction of all parties."

"And to their unutterable shame," said a clear, stern voice at their
back. Walter Clifford, coming rapidly in, had heard but little, but heard
enough; and there he stood, grim and pale, a boy no longer. These two
skunks had made a man of him in one moment. They recoiled in dismay, and
the woman hid her face.

He turned upon the man first, you may be sure. "So you have palmed this
lady off on me as your sister, and trapped me, and would have destroyed
me." His lip quivered; for they had passed the iron through his heart.
But he manned himself, and carried it off like a soldier's son:

"But if I was fool enough to leave my father, I am not fool enough to
present to the world your cast-off mistress as my wife." (Lucy hid her
face in her hands.) "Here, Miss Lucy Monckton--or whatever your name may
be--here is the marriage license. Take that and my contempt, and do what
you like with them."

With these words he dashed into Bartley's private room, and there broke
down. It was a bitter cup, the first in his young life.

The baffled schemers drank wormwood too; but they bore it differently.
The woman cried, and took her punishment meekly; the man raged and
threatened vengeance.

"No, no," said Lucy; "it serves us right. I wish I had never seen the
fellow: then you would have kept your word, and married me."

"I will marry you now, if you can obey me."

"Obey you, Leonard? You have been my ruin; but only marry me, and I will
be your slave in everything--your willing, devoted, happy slave."

"That is a bargain," said Monckton, coolly. "I'll be even with him; I
will marry you in his name and in his place."

This puzzled Lucy.

"Why in his name?" said she.

He did not answer.

"Well, never mind the name," said she, "so that it is the right man--and
that is you."

Then Monckton's fertile brain, teeming with villainies, fell to hatching
a new plot more felonious than the last. He would rob the safe, and get
Clifford convicted for the theft; convicted as Bolton, Clifford would
never tell his real name, and Lucy should enter the Cliffords' house with
a certificate of his death and a certificate of his marriage, both
obtained by substitution, and so collar his share of the L20,000, and
off with the real husband to fresh pastures.

Lucy looked puzzled. Hers was not a brain to disentangle such a
monstrous web.

Monckton reflected a moment. "What is the first thing? Let me see. Humph!
I