A thousand times he had read and re-read the letter that Lady Deppingham had written to him just before the ceremony in the cathedral at Thorberg. He knew every word that it contained; he could read it in the dark. She had said that Genevra was going into a hell that no hereafter could surpass in horrors! And that was ages ago, it seemed to him. Genevra had been a wife for nearly three months--the wife of a man she loathed; she was calling in her heart for him to come to her; she was suffering in that unspeakable hell. All this he had come to feel and shudder over in his unspeakable loneliness. He would go to her! There could be no wrong in loving her, in being near her, in standing by her in those hours of desperation. A copy of a London newspaper, stuffed away in the recesses of his trunk, dated June 29th, had come to him by post. It contained the telegraphic details of the brilliant wedding in Thorberg. He had read the names of the guests over and over again with a bitterness that knew no bounds. Those very names proved to him that her world was not his, nor ever could be. Every royal family in Europe was represented; the list of noble names seemed endless to him--the flower of the world's aristocracy. How he hated them! The next morning Selim aroused him from his fitful sleep, bringing the news that a strange vessel had arrived off Aratat. Chase sprang out of bed, possessed of the wild hope that the opportunity to leave the island had come sooner than he had expected. He rushed out upon his veranda, overlooking the little harbour. A long, white, graceful craft was lying in the harbour. It was in so close to the pier that he had no choice but to recognise it as a vessel of light draft. He stared long and intently at the trim craft. "Can I be dreaming?" he muttered, passing his hand over his eyes. "Don't lie to me, Selim! Is it really there?" Then he uttered a loud cry of joy and started off down the slope with the speed of a race horse, shouting in the frenzy of an uncontrollable glee. It was the Marquess of B----'s white and blue yacht! * * * * * Three weeks later, Hollingsworth Chase stepped from the deck of the yacht to the pier in Marseilles; the next day he was in Paris, attended by the bewildered and almost useless Selim. An old and valued friend, a campaigner of the war-time days, met him at the Gare de Lyon in response to a telegram. "I'll tell you the whole story of Japat, Arch, but not until to-morrow," Chase said to him as they drove toward the Ritz. "I arrived yesterday on the Marquess of B----'s yacht--the _Cricket_. Do you know him? Of course you do. Everybody does. The _Cricket_ was cruising down my way and picked me up--Bowles and me. The captain came a bit out of his way to call at Aratat, but he had orders of some sort from the Marquess, by cable, I fancy, to stop off for me."