“Have mercy upon me; let me depart, or I shall swoon,” she ejaculated, in a feeble voice. “Oh! in mercy let me go.” “Your promise,” he cried. “Let me give you the best reason to fall in with my arrangements. The name of him you loved was Hugh Riversdale--” She leaped up. “If you would not have me fall dead at your feet, let me go!” she exclaimed, frantically. “Not till you hear from me,” he answered scornfully, “that knowing the fellow to be a beggarly clerk to a merchant, I called at the warehouse to make inquiries respecting him, and in proof of the estimation in which he was held in his own province, was told abruptly that he was dead--had died on his voyage out to India, and was thrown into the sea.” Helen uttered a faint scream, and fell back lifeless. The firm grip with which Lester Vane yet held her prevented her receiving injury in her fall. When she was lifeless upon the green sward, he released her hands, repenting, at the moment, his precipitation. He had no time for more. He was suddenly seized by the throat, and dragged from the shadow into the open space, where there was light enough for him to distinguish features he had seen once before. “Scoundrel!” cried his assailant, “we have met again--once before to your discomfiture; this time to the defeat of your base villany; beware, the third time it will be fatal to you!” These words, forced between clenched teeth, were growled in his ears, and then it seemed that myriads of flashes of light dashed before his sight; he was hurled to the ground with tremendous violence, and he remembered no more. The stranger bent tenderly over the prostrate form of Helen, raised her up gently, imprinted a passionate kiss upon her cold lips, and pressed her to his breast. “Mine, mine only, my wife, let me see who will dare to take her from me now!” As he muttered these words, he lifted her senseless form carefully and fondly in his arms, just as though she had been a child, and he bore her to the side of the ornamental water, where lay a boat. In this he laid her gently down, covered her with a boat cloak, and rowed swiftly away with his prize. CHAPTER II--SUSPICION. “Who never loved, ne’er suffered; he feels nothing Who nothing feels but for himself alone; And when we feel for others, reason reels, O’erloaded from her path, and man runs mad. As love alone can exquisitely bless, Love alone feels the marvellous of pain-- Opens new veins of torture in the soul, And wakes the nerves where agonies are born. Young. Many a weary hour, on the night of Helen’s departure, did Lotte sit watching by her little charge while it slumbered, plying her ever-busy needle in making its clothes, with which it was very scantily provided.