"Without a word more he rose and left the room, and five minutes later Geoffrey entered it. "To relate what passed between him and me would not entertain you in the least. It will be enough to state that if we had not been betrothed lovers before, we became so from that hour. "It was to Rockmount that Geoffrey had directed his steps on the night of his escape, and there he had been in hiding ever since. "When the time had come for me to take my departure in order that I might get back to Stanbrook before dark, I said to him, 'But shall I not see Mr. Ellerslie again before I go?' "'That you certainly will not,' he replied with one of his puzzling smiles. 'Mr. Cope-Ellerslie is no longer in existence. He died about an hour ago. His life was brief but necessary. Peace to his remains!' Then, seeing my look of amazement, he added, 'Have you not yet found out, or even suspected, that Mr. Ellerslie and Geoffrey Dare were one and the same person?" "No, that I certainly had not. Nevertheless, I was now assured that such was the fact, and I had to delay my departure for another half hour while the mystery was cleared up for me. "When Geoffrey Dare left London a ruined man, bankrupt in love, in friendship, in means (I long ago explained to you under what peculiar circumstances he was induced to take to the King's highway), he came to Rockmount, which was his own property, and which, owing doubtless to its isolated situation in the midst of a wide stretch of desolate moorland, had been untenanted for years. With him he brought three old family servants, whom not even the rack or the thumbscrew would have forced into betraying him. But it was Mr. Cope-Ellerslie, the scholar and the recluse, who had become the tenant of Rockmount, and no faintest suspicion ever got abroad that there was, or could be, any connection between him and Captain Nightshade. "So far so good; but I still failed to comprehend the nature of a disguise which so completely changed Geoffrey's identity that only an hour before my eyes had failed to penetrate it. To take one point alone: in Mr. Ellerslie's face, leaving out of account the difference in the complexions, there bad been a thousand fine lines and creases, whereas in Geoffrey's it would have puzzled one to find a dozen. "Then was I enlightened. Mr. Cope-Ellerslie's face was a mask, of which moustache, beard, eyebrows, and hair formed component parts. The foundation of the mask consisted of the skin of a newly-born kid, pared or scraped to an exceeding fineness, and moulded to the features while still plastic. Geoffrey had brought it with him from Italy several years before, where such disguises seem to be not unknown, and where it had been made for him in order that he might take part in a certain carnival frolic. So simple sometimes is the explanation of an apparently inscrutable mystery! "But my letter is dragging itself out to an unconscionable length, and I must hurry on.