In the shortest possible time he was at Hampstead, inquiring at Steele’s Road for Miss Anderson’s address. Mr. Sinclair happened to be out--which Bernard thought was just as well for him; but the servant being under the impression that his master was somewhere about the house, Bernard was shown up into the studio. There, as he waited, he perceived more than one painting in which Doris’s fair sweet face was beautifully delineated. The sight of it there, however, only maddened her unhappy lover. What right had the fellow to make Doris’s loveliness so common? What right had he to possess the presentment of it there? By the power of his strong will and helped by his riches he had prevailed upon the lonely girl to promise him her hand in marriage. In the absence of her own true lover he had stolen her from him. But a Nemesis had come, was coming indeed; and when Doris saw her Bernard and spoke with him, face to face, she would throw over the usurper, and matters would be readjusted as happily, nay, more happily, than if this engagement had not occurred. "’For things can never go wholly wrong If the heart be true and the love be strong’"-- quoted Bernard to himself, "and there shall be no mere engagement, but a marriage shall take place forthwith. For, thank God! I am rich enough now," he said to himself, "to be able to marry my Doris. Yes, all will come right when I see her again." A maidservant entered, bringing in an address on a slip of paper. "Mr. Sinclair is out," she said, "but this is where we have to send all letters that come, either for Miss Sinclair or Miss Anderson." "Thank you," said Bernard, taking up the scrap of paper, and reading, "The Queen’s Hotel, Hastings," upon it. "I will go there immediately," he said to himself, as he left the house. "I will take the very first express train to Hastings." He hailed a cab. "Drive me to Charing Cross," he ordered, "and drive your fastest." *CHAPTER XXII* *TOO LATE! TOO LATE!* There is no disguise which can long conceal love when it does, or feign it when it does not exist.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. "How strange it is to be rich!" cried Alice Sinclair, as she sat with Doris in a shelter by the sea at Hastings. "It _is_ delightful!" Doris smiled, but her smile only seemed to enhance the sadness in the expression of her beautiful face, and she shivered slightly as she drew a fur-lined cloak more closely round her. "This is different from account-collecting," she said, looking at the fashionably dressed people sauntering by, and then allowing her eyes to rest upon the beauty of the sunlit waves before them. "Yes, or making imitation oil-paintings either!" exclaimed Alice. "Who would have thought to see us, now, that we were two poor girls toiling in a London garret not long ago?" "To feed a ’Lion’ and pay a monstrous debt," said Doris, plaintively.