She watched him. He grew deathly and bowed his white head. Joan felt sorry for the man now that he was at her mercy; but her imagination played with the secret, as a child plays with a prism in the sunshine. Its flashing colours allured her. "Oh! if I only _knew_ something," she thought, "something which would hold in law, and could go through the courts, where might I not stand? I might reach one of the highest places a woman can fill. But it’s no use; I must take what I can get, and be thankful; and, anyway, I can’t help pitying him a little, though I’m sure he doesn’t deserve it. He’s old and tired, and I won’t make him suffer more than is necessary for the game." Joan again named her terms, this time with much ornamental detail. She was to be a newly discovered orphan cousin. Her name was to be, as it had been in Cornwall, Mercy Milton. She was to be invited to visit, for an indefinite length of time, at Northmuir House. Her noble relative was to exert himself to the extent of giving entertainments to introduce her to his most influential and highly placed friends. He was also to make her an allowance of a thousand pounds a year. "Don’t think, if you gamble away as--as the other did, that I will go beyond this bargain, for I will not!" cried Lord Northmuir, with a testy desire to assert himself and show that he was not wholly to be cowed. "I don’t gamble, except with Fate," said Joan. This exclamation of his explained one or two things which had been dark. She guessed now why Mrs. Gone, evidently used to luxuries, had been reduced to living on the charity of a boarding-house keeper, and why it had been necessary to wait until she should be well enough to go out before she could obtain "remittances." Having concluded her arrangement with Lord Northmuir, and settled to become his relative and guest, Joan went back in her brougham to Woburn Place. She told Miss Witt that she had been called away, packed her things, left such as she would not want in Belgrave Square in boxes at the boarding-house, delighted the housekeeper with many gifts, and the following morning drove off with a pile of luggage on a cab. Turning the corner of Woburn Place into the next street, she also turned a corner in her career, and for the third time ceased to be Joan Carthew. She had chosen to take up her lately laid down part of Mercy Milton for two reasons. One was, that in this character as she had played it in Cornwall, with meekly parted hair, soft, downcast eyes, simple manners and simple frocks, she was not likely to be recognised by any one who had known the dashing and magnificent Miss Jenny Mordaunt; while if she should come across Cornish acquaintances, there was nothing in her new position which need invalidate the story of Lady Pendered’s gentle sister.