"How long is this to go on? Do you know that the presence of my rival maddens me every hour of the day? Are you not afraid--you would be, if you knew me!--that I should do some desperate deed? I tell you that I am afraid of myself! I cannot always restrain my impulses, Malcolm. There are moments when I doubt whether you are not playing me false. And at such times I am in danger of doing some desperate deed that will make England ring with the hearing of it," said Mrs. Dugald, with passionate earnestness. "Faustina, you know that I adore you. Be patient a few days longer-- a very few days. The time is nearly ripe. I have at last found the instrument of which I have been so much in need. This man, Frisbie. He is completely in my power, and will be a ready tool. I will tell you the whole scheme. But stop! first I must secure this interview from interruption. Not a word of this communication must be overheard by any chance listener," said Lord Vincent. And to poor old Katie's consternation he passed swiftly to the outer door of the suite of rooms, locked it and put the key in his pocket and returned to the dressing room, the door of which remained open. "Dere! if I aint cotch like an old rat in a trap, you may take my hat! Don't care! I gwine hear all dey got to say. An' if dey find me dey can't hang me for it, dat's one good thing! And maybe dey won't find me, if I keep still till my lordship--perty lordship he is-- unlocks de door and goes out, and den I slip out myself, just as I slipped in, and nobody none de wiser. Only if I don't sneeze. I feel dreadful like sneezing. Nobody ever had such an unlucky nose as I have got. Laws, laws, if I was to sneeze!" thought old Katie to herself as she lurked behind the draperies. But soon every sense was absorbed in listening to the villainous plot that Lord Vincent was unfolding to his companion. It was the very same plot that he had communicated to his valet, the atrocity of which had shocked even that cut-throat. It did not shock Faustina, however. She listened with avidity. She co-operated with zeal. She suggested such modifications and improvements for securing the success of the conspiracy, and the safety of the conspirators, as only her woman's tact, inspired by the demon, could invent. "Oh, the she-sarpint! the deadly, wenemous, pisonous sarpint!" shuddered Katie, in her hiding-place. "I've heern enough this night to hang the shamwally, and send all the rest on 'em to Bottommy Bay. And I'll do it, too, if ever I live to get out'n this room alive." But at that instant the catastrophe that Katie had dreaded occurred. Katie sneezed--once, twice, thrice: "Hick-ket-choo! Hick-ket-choo! Hick-ket-choo!" Had a bombshell exploded in that room it could not have excited a greater commotion. Lord Vincent sprang up, and in an instant had the eavesdropper by the throat. "Now, you old devil, what have you got to say for yourself?" demanded the viscount, in a voice of repressed fury, as he shook Katie.