What does Léonie know of God? Still less does she care about Him. God, to Léonie, is an expression, a forcible expression, and no more. The expression serves her well on this occasion, however. Miles Gripper’s honest heart is no match for detective acting. Believing that he is serving the duke, he passes the secret, which he was bidden to keep, into the care of this apparently devoted and self-sacrificing adherent of his master. “And drat ye for a big-headed fool, when his Grace express forbade ye say aught of his whereabouts save to the Lady Flora,” Léonie hears a sharp, angry woman’s voice exclaiming. But she waits to hear no more. She is on her horse, and trotting quickly down the hill with the secret she had been puzzling her brains how to win, safe in her keeping. Small wonder at Dame Gripper’s ire. “Come on, Nero, laddie,” laughs the girl detective. “I thought I should want you, doggie, but I can do without you now. However, come along.” She rides back to the cross-roads and the signboard. On one of this latter’s arms is printed “Marlow.” “That’s it,” she mutters to herself, as she turns her horse’s head into the long straight road, which, girt on either side by tall dark trees, stretches far as the eye can reach. “I’m safe on the track now, I am.” Léonie is happy. One of the most difficult obstacles in her path has been lightly cleared, and quite unexpectedly too. Yes, she is happy, if it be possible for one so hard and callous to be so. Perhaps the dawn of a better day is coming for this child of an unholy love. As she rides along in the bright spring morning however, with her rough dog galloping by her side, she has no higher aim in life than to carry out successfully the “little job” which Mr. Trackem has confided to her care. END OF BOOK II. [Illustration] _BOOK III._ CHAPTER I. It is the last day of summer, and the evening hour is creeping on apace. A truly glorious day it has been, warmed by a brilliant sun, the heat of which has been tempered by one of those gentle zephyrs that love to play where all is warmth and sunshine. But now the day is dying, fading, as it were, gradually away. Time, which the science of man can never stay, stalks slowly on his path. It is he who declares that the spell of life which has lit the day with its brilliance, must pass onward into the darkness of advancing night. For what is life but a greater day of warmth and sunshine, storm and rain? What is death but the night which brings rest after the toils or pleasures of that day? What is the future life beyond, but a new day breaking into existence, perchance in a world more lovely than our own?