"What do you think!" he exclaimed, throwing a bundle of letters on the table, "one of Dick's speculations has turned out trumps, after all. He had invested several thousands of pounds--in Shiel's name--in enamel-ivorine, the new stuff for stopping teeth, which looks exactly like part of the teeth. I remember I thought it an absurd venture at the time, but for once in a way I was wrong--" "Ahem!" interrupted Gladys. "There has been a sudden boom in the patent, every dentist is using it, and, as a consequence, the shares have risen enormously. I've heard from Dick's lawyer to-day that Shiel is now worth fifty thousand pounds!" "Good heavens!" Miss Templeton ejaculated, "and Gladys has bound herself to Hamar! I suppose," she said afterwards, when John Martin and she were alone together, "that you would not have any objection to Shiel now, if Gladys were free to marry him." "Certainly not!" John Martin said, "certainly not, I always liked Shiel. A fine manly young fellow, very different to the type one usually meets nowadays. I only wish Gladys were free!" "You would raise no obstacle to her becoming engaged to Shiel?" "None whatsoever! But what's the good of talking about an impossibility. Gladys is stubbornness itself--when once she has made up her mind to do a thing, nothing in God's world will make her not do it." "Wait," Miss Templeton said, "wait and see. I think I can see a possible way out of it." She had learned much from Shiel in his "wanderings." He had constantly alluded to Hamar, Curtis, Kelson--and Lilian Rosenberg; to the great compact, and to the one possible way of breaking that compact--namely through the instigation of a quarrel between the trio. From several of the statements he had made, Miss Templeton deduced that Kelson was greatly under the influence of Lilian Rosenberg--and it was from these statements that she finally received an inspiration. Miss Templeton saw deeper than Shiel--it had always been her custom to read between the lines. "Now," she argued, "if Kelson were so easily influenced by Lilian Rosenberg, who was young and attractive, it was almost a _sine quâ non_ that he was in love with her," and as marriage was one of the eventualities strictly forbidden to the trio in the compact--"they must neither quarrel nor marry," Shiel had exclaimed--here was their chance. Kelson must marry Lilian Rosenberg, and by so doing, break the compact and overwhelm the trio in some sudden and dire catastrophe. But the marriage must take place within six months' time. How could that be arranged? Could Lilian Rosenberg be bribed or persuaded into it? for of course Miss Templeton being a woman--albeit an old maid--had at once divined that Lilian Rosenberg was in love with Shiel--that she did not care a straw for Kelson, and that to marry the latter she would need some very strong inducement. And the only inducement she could think of was Lilian's genuine love for Shiel.