ee her again. It is fate!"

He jumped up in bed, for a sudden thought now sent a chill of horror
through him, as for the first time the drugging which had taken place
showed itself in another light.

"To get rid of me," he muttered, as the great drops of sweat gathered on
his face, "and--the last thing I remember--Marion--her head fallen upon
the couch beside her brother, helpless now to protect her--drugged,
insensible, at the mercy of that villain; and I here without stirring or
raising a hand."

Some little time later, feeling weak and faint, he was standing in the
hall reaching down his hat, and for a moment he had a feeling of
compunction. Isabel--his sister--what would they think of his strange,
base infatuation?

"What they will," he said between his teeth. "Placed in such
circumstances, no man could be master of himself. I must save her, even
if we never meet again;" and the door closed after him loudly, as, half
mad now with excitement, Marion's eyes seeming to lure him on, he
stepped out into the darkness of the night.

"Whither?" he muttered, as he hurried across the Square. "Heaven help
me! it is my fate."

CHAPTER NINE.

A BLACKER CLOUD IN FRONT.

The nearest church clock was striking three as Chester passed into the
great west-end artery, which was almost deserted, and he had been
walking rapidly, under the influence of his strange excitement, for some
minutes before, clear as his head was now, he found himself brought up
short by a mental cloud as black and dense as that from which he had
suffered when he began to recover from the influence of the drug he had
taken.

But there was this difference: the dense obscurity then was relating to
the past--this was connected with the future.

"Good heavens!" he muttered. "Whatever he gave me must be acting still;
I am half delirious. I am no longer master of my actions. Why am I
here? What am I going to do?--To try to save her, for she is at his
mercy. But how?"

He stopped short, literally aghast at the horror which encompassed him
as he felt that he was utterly helpless.

How was he to save Marion? How take the place of the brother who had
defended her and fallen? Where was she?

In the great wilderness of houses which made up the overgrown city in
which he dwelt, where was the one he sought?

Utterly dazed, he stood trying to think out in which direction it lay,
and moment by moment his feeling of utter helplessness increased.