"Mr. Chester," she said--and paused, frightened at the change which came over him at the utterance of his name. His face grew white, and an ugly twitching played about his lips. "What have you heard?" he demanded hoarsely. She mustered sufficient strength to reply faintly. "The truth." His savage nature mastered him. With a cruel sweep of his arm, he dashed Mrs. Lenoir to the ground, and clasped the Duchess in a fierce embrace. Her shrieks pierced the air. "Help! Help!" Her appeal was answered, almost on the instant. An iron grasp upon his neck compelled him to relinquish his hold of the terrified girl. Seth Dumbrick held him as in a vice and he had no power to free himself. The warning voice of Richards was needed to put a limit to the strong man's just resentment: "Don't hurt him any more than is necessary, Mr. Seth Dumbrick. There's a rod in pickle for him worse than anything you can do to him." "Lie there, you dog!" exclaimed Seth, forcing Ned Chester to the ground, and placing his foot upon his breast. "Stir an inch, and I will kill you!" While this episode in the drama was being enacted, another of a different kind was working itself out. When the Duchess was released by Ned Chester, Arthur Temple threw his arm around her, to prevent her from falling. "Do not be frightened," he said, in a soothing tone, "you are safe now. I am glad we are in time. My name is Arthur Temple." They gazed at each other in rapt admiration. To Arthur, the beauty of the Duchess was a revelation. In the struggle with Ned Chester, her hat had fallen from her head, and her hair lay upon her shoulders in heavy golden folds. Her lovely eyes, suffused with tears, were raised to his face in gratitude. For a moment she was blind to everything but the appearance of this hero, who, as it seemed to her fevered fancy, had descended from Heaven to rescue her. But a cry of compassion from Sally brought her back to earth, and, turning, she saw her faithful nurse and companion kneeling in the snow, with Mrs. Lenoir's head in her lap. She flew to her side, and tremblingly assisted Sally in her endeavour to restore the insensible woman to life. But the blow which Ned Chester had dealt Mrs. Lenoir was a fierce one; she lay as one dead, and when, after some time, she showed signs of life, she feebly waved her hands, in the effort to beat away a shadowed horror, and moaned: "Will he never come? Will he never come?" She was living the past over again. Her mind had gone back to the time when, assisted by John, the gardener of Springfield, she had travelled in agony through the heavy snow, to implore the man who had betrayed and deserted her to take pity on her hapless state, and to render her some kind of human justice, if not for her sake, for the sake of his child, then unborn. And the thought which oppressed her and filled her with dread at that awful epoch of her life, now found expression on her lips: "Will he never come? Oh, my God! will he never come?"