He hurried into the apartment through the open window, and was horrified to find Olive prostrate on the floor, with her arms outspread, and in a fainting condition. He raised her up and laid her on a sofa, withdrawing the pillow from under her head, and looked round for water to lave her face and hands, one of which clutched a pen. A large sealskin cigar case, with Rio Hondo cigars in it--a case which he well remembered to have seen in possession of Holcroft--lay upon the floor. How came it there, unless the man he saw was, beyond all doubt, Hawke Holcroft? Olive's cheque-book--for she had a bank account of her own--lay open on her davenport, and Allan's eye caught the counterfoil of one, dated that very day, and almost wet still, for £400. 'Four hundred pounds!' he gasped, and tried to tear open his necktie, while the room swam round him. 'Oh, God! can it be that she is playing fast and loose with me and that double-dyed villain?' That she should have any intercourse, verbal or written, with such a wretch excited in Allan a gust of rage and bewilderment, disgust, horror, and intense perplexity. Yet it might be all quite explainable--even the cheque. She opened her eyes and closed them again, and pathetically he besought her to tell him what had happened, but could elicit no reply. Her slender throat seemed parched, as she failed to articulate. 'Oh, Olive,' said he, 'if I alarm you, forgive me. You know how I love you. Why torture me by this silence--tell me all--_what_ has happened--_who_ has been here?' But he urged and pled in vain; her teeth were clenched. 'Is it some folly--some girlish imprudence? _what_ is it? Dear love, only tell me?' Still she was silent, and Allan's brows knit darkly and ominously, while, in the excited state of his nerves, he felt sharp twinges in the arm that had been fractured, and, when consciousness came partially back to Olive, she covered her face with her hands, and sobbed heavily and spasmodically. What had happened? Why was she so suddenly cast down, hurled, as it were, from the joy, rapture, and repose of an hour ago, to the apparent agony and shame of the present? Nothing could be elicited from her, and the next day found her in a species of hysterical fever, and in the hands of the doctor. In a short time it was discovered that her cheque--an open one--payable to Mr. Hawke Holcroft, and duly endorsed by that personage, had been presented and cashed at a bank; yet no explanation could be elicited from her about it. 'She had on the ill-omened diamonds, mother,' said Allan, interrogatively. 'How was this?' 'I lent them to her, as the bride of the house, and doubtless she had been trying them on when--when----' 'This scoundrel thrust himself upon her presence?' 'I suppose so,' said Lady Aberfeldie, weeping. 'Evil always comes of these accursed stones!'