“Certainly; a dozen if you like,” Lord Carrol answered, haughtily, for Ralph’s refusal to take his hand had hurt him keenly. “You have been in America?” “Yes.” “You met there a young lady by the name of Miss Stella Gladstone?” Lord Carrol started as from a sudden shock, and grew pale to his lips. “Stella Gladstone! What can you tell me of Star Gladstone?” he demanded, hoarse from emotion. “That her heart is broken—her life ruined,” Ralph Meredith answered, sternly, for he knew now that he had found his man, and he meant to show him no mercy. He trembled with excitement, and his fingers ached to strangle the villain and coward who had so basely betrayed the trust of the loveliest woman on earth. “Her life ruined! _Don’t_ tell me that,” Lord Carrol whispered, with white lips, while the look of agony which leaped to his eyes would have moved the hardest heart, had it been less sore than Ralph Meredith’s. “Yes, and _you_ are the traitor who is accountable for it,” he answered, hotly. The young man flushed, and he drew himself up with sudden dignity, struggling to regain his self-possession, which had been sadly disturbed at the mention of that dearly loved name. “You forget yourself, sir,” he said, haughtily. “What right have you to address me thus? Why do _you_ speak to me in this way of Miss Gladstone, and arraign me for what you assert?” “Why should I _not_?” Ralph Meredith demanded, in low, fierce tones. “Did she not tell me with her own lips of your baseness and treachery? And do you think that I can take the hand of the man, were he twice a lord, who has ruined the life of”—“the only woman whom I ever loved,” he was about to add, but something restrained him and made him substitute—“an angel?” Archibald Sherbrooke was very pale now. He was a proud, brave young man, and all the hot blood in his composition had been aroused by this sudden and unexpected attack from the stranger to whom he had been introduced by a mutual friend. He had uttered words which, under any other circumstances, would have made him fell him to the ground and chastise him for his insolence. But he controlled himself, for he saw that Ralph was a noble fellow, although he had constituted himself the champion of the woman whom he still loved with a deathless love, and meant to avenge her wrongs if he was assured that he had found the right man. He reasoned, too, that he must be laboring under the same mistake of which Star had been the victim, and that the only way to deal with him would be to explain just how matters stood. Besides, a wild hope was springing up in his heart that through him he might be able to find her whom he had lost, and whom he never ceased for one moment to love. He laid his hand on Ralph’s arm, and the young man felt it tremble with the emotion which thrilled him.