the servants she does
not count at all--are keeping all these men at bay so long!

The suspense becomes torture. She feels that at any risk she must know
how things are going, and, cautiously opening the door, she looks out.

The hall is full of police; most of the attacking party have been
disarmed--a few have escaped, but she does not know that; three men,
however, are making a pretty tough fight for it still. But even as
Honor stands and looks on, powerless in her dismay, it is over; the men
are struck down and secured.

"This is no sight for you, Honor," a man's voice says suddenly, and,
looking up, she sees Brian Beresford before her, with an ugly cut on
the temple, from which the blood is flowing freely.

"You!" she gasps, holding her hands out to him with a gesture
infinitely touching in one so cold and proud as Honor. "Oh, Brian, I
have been wanting you so! I--I thought you would never come back!"

"You see you were mistaken," he says coolly. How the man's pulse are
throbbing, how the welcome in her glad sweet eyes has thrilled him, no
one looking at him could divine. "I said you were not so unprotected as
you imagined," he adds, looking round with a grim smile. "We got here
in time to foil the rascals--thanks to Aileen!"

"Why, what had Aileen to do with it? She went home hours ago."

"No, she did not. She crossed the mountain to Drum--a stiff climb for a
woman of her years--and gave us notice that the house was to be
attacked some time to-night, and off we came."

"Gave you notice?" the girl repeats. She looks dazed and faint, as well
she may--a hollow-eyed, white-faced wraith of a girl, in her creased
white gown.

The captured men are filing out now in twos and threes, closely
guarded. Suddenly Honor starts forward, she has caught sight of a face
that, disfigured by blows as it is, she would know among a thousand,
and her heart seems to cease beating with the shock.

The tall man marching past between two policemen looks at her for an
instant, and then turns his head aside. It is the one thing too much
for Honor. With a heart-broken cry that has a thrill of horror in it
she falls forward at her cousin's feet.

"Confound the fellow!" he says to himself, as he lifts her gently in
his arms, as if she had been a child. "If he had not held out, like the
fool he is, she need never have known a word about it."

CHAPTER VI.

Kate Dundas's most bitter enemies cannot deny that she is a beautiful
wom