“Listen, dear,” he said. “I can no more explain this wretched business than you can. But until it becomes clear, you must trust me and look upon me as a brother, and I, so Heaven help me, will treat you and think of you as a dear sister. I have an aunt, Mrs. Sinclair, who lives in Bayswater. She is a rich woman, a childless widow, and very kindly. I will place you in her care for the present, while I thoroughly investigate this business. Meantime I will pledge myself on my honor to say no word to any one which shall reveal your whereabouts. Will that suit you?” “Yes, Hilary. I will do everything you tell me.” While they were driving together in a hansom in the direction of Mrs. Sinclair’s residence, Lord Carthew, in his search after his wife, was undergoing a very strange experience. At the Duchess Street lodgings he gathered little but that an elderly woman named Tait, a professional nurse, lived there, and that three days ago a very old woman had driven up in a four-wheeled cab, and had placed a pretty young invalid lady, who appeared to be in a fainting condition, in Mrs. Tait’s care. On this particular morning the young lady had gone out alone at about seven o’clock, and shortly afterward Mrs. Tait, who appeared distressed at the girl’s absence, had left, presumably in search of her. Puzzled and anxious, Lord Carthew left, deciding that he would call again, and he was proceeding down Regent Street when, to his astonishment, from the doors of a well-known fashionable millinery establishment he saw, as he believed, his newly made bride emerge, followed by a bowing shopman, laden with parcels. She was dressed in the identical gray crape costume she had worn on her wedding journey, and she walked leisurely, with her proud head held erect and the sunshine lighting up her lovely face, to a smart victoria which waited for her by the pavement. A man-servant in dark livery opened her carriage-door, a tall, finely-built man in whom, in spite of the absence of beard about his chin, Lord Carthew traced a marked resemblance to the gamekeeper, Stephen Lee. Neither the lady nor the man perceived Lord Carthew, who, as the victoria drove away, sprang into a hansom which he directed to follow on the track of the carriage. Down Regent Street, the Haymarket, and across Trafalgar Square, went pursuer and pursued, until, passing down Northumberland Avenue, the victoria drew up with a flourish before the doors of a fashionable hotel greatly patronized by Americans and wealthy travellers passing through London. The swarthy groom assisted his mistress to alight, and she then, conscious of the admiring ogle of several smart young men who were lounging about the hotel entrance, stopped to give a prolonged order to the coachman before leisurely walking up the hotel steps, throwing, as she did so, many glances of bold coquetry to right and left of her.