“I have not forgotten your ways,” he observed, drawing out a purple velvet box stuck behind the picture and putting it carefully into his breast pocket. “I thought they would be there.” He took up his shining hat airily. “Au revoir, dear lady,” he said. “Tell your little girl to open the door for me.” At the words a last hope dawned on Mrs. Trelane’s misery. Marcus admired the girl--then, perhaps, she could manage him where her mother had failed. “Wait here, I’ll find her,” she faltered; and hurried out. Ismay, sitting on her bed, wrapped in the coverlet to keep warm, started at her mother’s livid face; started once again at her quick, whispered sentences. “You let him frighten you! You let him know you had them!” She stamped her foot. “What could I do? Oh! go to him, try----” Mrs. Trelane threw herself on the bed, broken with tearless sobbing that she could not control; and her daughter, with a bravery that sprang from ignorance, went down to try her strength against that of Marcus Wray. Half an hour later she stood alone in the room she had entered with her head high and her eyes blazing. Now she shivered as she heard the front door close behind the strange visitor. Yet he had been perfectly civil. “The diamonds--since you insist these are diamonds--are quite safe. So is the reputation of your mother while you take an interest in it. Suppose you go to the theater with me to-morrow night?--it would do you good,” he had said to her. His words rang in her ears, the tone had been perfectly polite, but the veiled threat in it had staggered her. The next moment she had found her courage. “With you? No, never!” “You had better think of it,” he said quietly. “I assure you I am a good friend and a bad enemy. If I have taken a liking to you, why be angry? You can’t get away from London, you know, without any money--nor from me.” He was gone now, out of the house, yet a sudden terror of him shook her. She turned and ran, as if she were hunted, to where her mother lay shivering on the bed. “Mother,” she cried desperately, “think quickly! Isn’t there some way we can be rid of that man?” “I’ll try--but I don’t think I can find one.” Mrs. Trelane shivered as she rose and went to her writing-table. Ismay, watching her haggard face, was terror-stricken afresh. How had her mother been terrified into giving up those diamonds? Was there something that Marcus Wray knew? Ismay could not finish that thought. She sat motionless, as Mrs. Trelane, without even showing her the address of the letter she had written, went out and posted it. CHAPTER V. A LUCKY CAST.