nd, as yet unobserved, Chester saw that
she looked pale, troubled and weary, her half-closed eyes dreamy and
thoughtful.

Fate favoured him, for there was a block somewhere ahead, and the horses
were stopped only a few yards away.

He passed under the rail, walked up quickly, still unobserved, till his
hand was upon the carriage door.

"Marion!" he whispered.

She gave a violent start, the blood suffused her cheeks, and then fled,
leaving her deadly pale, as she gazed at him with dilating eyes.

"I beg your pardon," she said coldly, "you addressed me?"

"Yes," he said in a low voice which trembled a little from the excess of
his emotion, "but we are alone now, Marion. For pity's sake let there
be an end to this."

"Ah, I remember," she said in her low, musical tones, "you are the
strange gentleman who addressed me before. You are repeating your
mistake, sir."

"Indeed!" he said reproachfully, as he fixed her eyes with his. "Do you
think I could ever be mistaken?"

She bowed slightly and drew a little back, glancing hurriedly at the
driver, and then looking ahead as if eager for the carriage to proceed.

"How can you be so cruel?" he whispered. "Marion, you are maddening
me!"

He saw her wince, but with wonderful self-command she sat rigid as she
said slowly--

"I beg, sir, that there may be an end of this. Can you not see that you
are making a mistake, and are insulting an unprotected woman?"

She looked him fully in the eyes now with a calm air of wonderment, and
for the moment he was in doubt.

But the next moment his heart said no, and his pulses increased their
beat. No accidental resemblance could have produced that effect upon
him. He knew that there was something which he could not explain--a
strange vitality or occult force which bound him to her, and, though his
eyes might have erred, his nature could have made no such blunder, and
he was eager to continue the attack now the opportunity was there.

"Mistaken?" he said in a low, impassioned tone; "how could I be
mistaken? From the first moment you came to me, your looks, the tones
of your voice in your appeal to me for help, awoke something which till
then had slumbered within me. I had lived in ignorance of the reality
of such a passion, one which has gone on growing like a torrent ever
since. It has swept all before it since the hour I knew that I had
found my fate."

"My good sir," she said firmly and gently; "indeed you are tak