There was no reason given. She had gone. Nor, if one may anticipate, has Armorel yet discovered the reasons for this sudden flight. Nor, as you will presently discover, will Armorel ever be able to discover those reasons. CHAPTER XXI ALL LOST BUT---- Mr. Alec Feilding paced the thick carpet of his studio with a restless step and an unquiet mind. Never before had he faced a more gloomy outlook. Black clouds, storm and rain, everywhere. Bad, indeed, is it for the honest tradesman when there is no money left, and no credit. But a man can always begin the world again if he has a trade. The devil of it is when a man has no trade at all, except that of lying and cheating in the abstract. Many men, it is true, combine cheatery and falsehood with their trade. Few are so unfortunate as to have no trade on which to base their frauds and adulterations. Everything threatened, and all at once. Nay, it seemed as if everything was actually taken from him and all at once. Not something here, which might be repaired, and something there, a little later on, but all at once--everything. Nothing at all left. Even his furniture and his books might be seized. He would be stripped of his house, his journal, his name, his credit, his position--even his genius! Therefore his face--that face which Armorel found so wooden--was now full of expression, but of the terror-stricken, hunted kind: that of the man who has been found out and is going to be exposed. On the table lay three or four letters. They had arrived that morning. He took them up and read them one after the other. It was line upon line, blow upon blow. The first was from Roland Lee.