"I did not know you had a lunatic brother, Mary," said Manville, in a loud aside; and then turning to Arden, "My respect for Lady Mary Selby prevents my kicking you out of the room, Mr. Arden; but I hope you will remember that the restraint of a lady's presence has its limits, and relieve us from your company."

The strong dark face was livid with rage, but the man held himself in check.

Arden ignored him, and kept his eyes upon his sister, who sat fanning herself, with a hand that trembled violently, and trying to look unconcerned.

"Are you coming, Mary?" he asked.

Do

"Certainly not. Do you suppose I am going to be carried off to please you, when I am absolutely famishing, and jumped at Colonel Manville's offer of supper? you suppose I shall submit to be dictated to by a younger brother, scolded as if I were a naughty child? If you are such a Philistine as to see any harm in my supping tête-à-tête with a friend, I can only say you are a quarter of a century behind your age."

Manville stood like a stone figure, watching and listening, "I am not here to discuss social ethics, Mary," said Arden, quietly. "If your host were any one else, I should be the last to interfere; but you shall not break bread with a seducer and a murderer, if I can help it. Yes, a murderer" -answering Manville's look with eyes that flamed; " for to steal an innocent girl from her home, and to destroy her mind and soul-to drive her to attempt suicide to reduce reason to imbecility, and doom her to a miserable future, is the worst kind of murder; and that is Colonel Manville's last crime; and that is why I will not suffer my sister to breathe the air he breathes, while I live."

"Manville, is it true?" cried Lady Mary, who had risen, in a tumult of agitation, and stood looking distractedly from the accuser to the accused.

"True! Don't you see that the man is raving?" exclaimed Manville, contemptuously.

"No, no! He never told me a lie. It is true. I believe every word. Give me my cloak, Walter. There "-pointing to the chair where her priceless sables had been thrown. "Yes, I will go with you"-as Arden wrapped the heavy

cloak about her-"this instant. I will never see him again -never. This is not the first warning. Other people have told me what he is. Thank God, it is not too late-not too late-to laugh at my folly."

"I think all the world is mad to-night," said Manville, contemptuously. "I cannot dispute with a lady's right to go or come as caprice dictates; but remember, Lady Mary, if you leave the room with the man who has grossly insulted me, you and I must be strangers till the end of our lives. No after-regret, no change of feeling on your part, will ever bring me back to you."

She had taken her brother's arm, and was moving towards the door. She turned and looked at Manville with a strange expression, in which fear predominated.

He followed them to the threshold.

"A word with you, Mr. Arden," he said, in a low voice, grasping Arden's arm in a grip of iron, as he drew him away from Lady Mary.

It was the first and the only time Manville touched him ; and he never forgot that iron hand. Was it ice or fire that ran through his veins under that pressure? Was it a sense of burning or of weight? He was never able to define the sensation; but the memory of it remained.

"I suppose you know what this kind of insult involves in any country but your own?" whispered Manville.

"I am at your disposition, sir. Your friends will find me at the Hôtel Loyola, on the rive gauche."

"My friend shall call at your hotel in the afternoon, by which time you may have provided yourself with a second. No need for two. We can fight in the English fashion."

"As you please."

Arden passed him, and took his sister down the staircase and out into the avenue, where he found a disengaged fly among the crowd of carriages waiting for late revellers.

"What is this ghastly story, Walter ?" Lady Mary asked, in a piteous voice. "Is Manville the unspeakable villain you make him?”

"Yes, he is an unspeakable villain."

"I have been a fool in encouraging his attentions. He is clever and amusing-an eccentric-altogether different from

the crowd of men my husband brings round me, who are all boring, and all alike; and I have allowed myself to be interested in him, perhaps a little more than I ought to be. But life is so empty."

"So empty! Poor Mary!" thought Arden, remembering Lady Maud Elderton, that other sister of his, in her rural rectory, for whom life was so full-full of simple things, of children, and children's clothes, and children's pleasures, and childish illnesses; of ponies and poultry, and husband, and sermons, and parish work.

"I should not have believed you, if I had not seen the truth in his face," said Lady Mary; "that cruel face, the eyes so brilliant and so hard, the sardonic lines of the iron lips. I used to admire him because he was so strong, like a tower, so strange, so terrible even; but to-night I saw the horror of it all. He is strong only in wickedness." "Thank God you are disillusioned." "Yes. The glamour has gone. I saw him in that instant without his mask. But that wretched girl! She was under the spell. Tell me about her."

Arden told her Lisbeth's story, briefly, but suppressing nothing, the pursuit, the elopement, the pit of hell into which the wretched girl had been flung, her attempt to drown herself, and her loss of reason.

"If you could have seen the human wreck that I carried home to a broken-hearted mother, you would hate the man as I do," he said. "Remember, it was no common cruelty. If he had loved the girl-even with an evil love—if he had chosen her for the companion of his life-one might say it was a common story of sin. But for a caprice, for the whim of an hour, he has destroyed a human soul, killed a life that was fair and full of promise."

"Oh, it is loathsome! I knew men were cruel to women— cruel to women they pretend to love-but not so cruel as that; not destroying a helpless creature for the fancy of a moment. But he will try to take his revenge for to-night, Walter. Such a man will have no mercy. What were you and he whispering about as we went downstairs ?"

"Nothing of any consequence."

"Oh, but it must have been of consequence-in such a moment. You are not going to fight a duel with him?”

"No, no. Here we are at the Bristol. Shall I see you to your rooms?"

"Don't trouble. My maid will be waiting for me, and I have a footman here. He will be sitting asleep in the hall, I dare say, poor wretch. Good night."

VII.

ARDEN called on Mr. de Courcy Smythe at the Continental, at eleven o'clock on the day after the Opera ball, and was fortunate enough to find that citizen of the world in the act of completing his toilet, in his comfortable apartment on the fourth floor, with a wide range of view over the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysées, the river, and the white façades and classic domes and pediments of official Paris on the farther shore-a dazzling picture in the clear light of a spring morning.

Smythe listened with a surprised interest when he heard that he was wanted as second in a duel; but when Arden told him the name of his antagonist, he dropped the coat he was in the act of putting on, and sat down in front of his friend.

"My dear Arden, I don't mind a duel, though it is deucedly un-English; but a duel with that satanic Russian ! For God's sake let it go no further. The man would kill you."

"Fortune of war. I hope I shall kill him."

"You hope-you, Walter Arden, the student, the mildest of men, a Brahmin, by Jove-would step out of your way rather than tread upon a worm! You! You want a man's blood upon your head ?"

"I want to kill that man. The world will be the better for his death."

"By Jupiter!"

Mr. Smythe could find no stronger expression of his astonishment. He put himself into his coat slowly, looking at his friend all the time.

"I say, Arden, this seems a beastly business! Is it anything you have got into your head about your--abouthesitatingly.