"How is she now?" inquired the Major of her father. "The same, alas!" answered the Tempter with well-assumed sorrow. "She will, we fear, not live till midnight." "Poor girl! Poor girl!" the new-comer ejaculated with a sigh, while the Tempter, excusing himself for an instant left the room. I would have risen and followed, but the Major, addressing me confidentially, said-- "This is a strange whim of my old friend's, marrying his daughter in this manner. There seems no motive for it, as far as I can gather." "No, none," I responded. "Mr Wynd has struck me as being somewhat eccentric." "He's a very good fellow--an excellent fellow. Entirely loyal to his friends. You are fortunate, my dear fellow, in having him as a father-in-law. He's amazingly well off, and generosity itself." I recollected his dastardly suggestion that my wife should not live longer than sundown, and smiled within myself. This friend of his evidently did not know his real character. Besides, being an observant man by nature, I noticed as I sat there one thing which filled me with curiosity. The tops of the Major's fingers and thumb of his right hand were thick and slightly deformed, while the skin was hardened and the nails worn down to the quick. While the left hand was of normal appearance, the other had undoubtedly performed hard manual labour. A major holding her Majesty's commission does not usually bear such evident traces of toil. The hand was out of keeping with the fine diamond ring that flashed upon it. "The incident of to-day," I said, "has been to me most unusual. It hardly seems possible that I am a bridegroom, for, truth to tell, I fancied myself the most confirmed of bachelors. Early marriage always hampers the professional man." "But I don't suppose you will have any cause for regret on that score," he observed. "You will have been a bridegroom and a widower in a single day." I was silent. His words betrayed him. He knew of the plot conceived by his friend to bribe me to kill the woman to whom I had been so strangely wedded! But successfully concealing my surprise at his incautious words, I answered-- "Yes, mine will certainly have been a unique experience." He courteously offered me a cigarette, and lighting one himself, held the match to me. Then we sat chatting, he telling me what a charming girl Beryl had been until stricken down by disease. "What was her ailment?" I inquired. "I am not aware of the name by which you doctors know it. It is, I believe, a complication of ailments. Half a dozen specialists have seen her, and all are agreed that her life cannot be saved. Wynd has spared no expense in the matter, for he is perfectly devoted to her." His words, hardly coincided with the truth, I reflected. So far from being devoted to her, he was anxious, for some mysterious reason, that she should not live after midnight. "To lose her will, I suppose, be a great blow to him?" I observed, with feigned sympathy.