morning, that this was no passing fancy of his; she was his first love--for good or for evil she would be his last. Failure, he said to himself, was a word which he would not admit in his vocabulary. She was moving towards him already, some day she should be his! Through the mists of blue tobacco smoke which hovered around him he seemed, with a very slight and very pleasant effort of his imagination, to see some faint visions of her in that more softening mood, the vaguest recollection of which set his heart beating fast and sent the blood moving through his veins to music. How delicately handsome she was, how exquisite the lines of her girlish, yet graceful and queenly figure. With her clear, creamy skin, soft as alabaster below the red gold of her hair, the somewhat haughty poise of her small, shapely head, she brought him vivid recollections of that old aristocracy of France, as one reads of them now only in the pages of romance or history. She had the grand air--even the great Queen could not have walked to the scaffold with a more magnificent contempt of the rabble, whose victim she was. Some more personal thought came to him; he half closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair steeped in pleasant thoughts; and then it all came to a swift, abrupt end, these reveries and pleasant castle-building. He was back in the present, suddenly recalled in a most extraordinary manner, to realisation of the hour and place. Surely he could not have been mistaken! That was a low knocking at his locked door outside; there was no doubt about it. There it was again! He heard his own name, softly but unmistakably spoken in a trembling voice. He glanced at his watch, it was between two and three o'clock; then he walked quickly to the door and opened it without hesitation. It was his father who stood there fully dressed, with pale face and angrily burning eyes. In his hand he carried a revolver. Wolfenden noticed that the fingers which clasped it were shaking, as though with cold. "Father," Wolfenden exclaimed, "what on earth is the matter?" He dropped his voice in obedience to that sudden gesture for silence. The Admiral answered him in a hoarse whisper. "A great deal is the matter! I am being deceived and betrayed in my own house! Listen!" They stood together on the dimly lit landing; holding his breath and listening intently, Wolfenden was at once aware of faint, distant sounds. They came from the ground floor almost immediately below them. His father laid his hand heavily upon Wolfenden's shoulder. "Some one is in the library," he said. "I heard the door open distinctly. When I tried to get out I found that the door of my room was locked; there is treachery here!" "How did you get out?" Wolfenden asked. "Through the bath-room and down the back stairs; that door was locked too, but I found a key that fitted it. Come with me. Be careful! Make no noise!"