"Monsieur," she said, "will you give me your word that the death of Mrs. Pargeter was as this paper declares it to have been--that is to say, a natural death?" "Yes," answered Vanderlyn, "she knew that she would die in this way--suddenly." "Then," said the fortune-teller, coldly, "I will do as you desire." Vanderlyn, following a sudden impulse, put the envelope he held in his hand on the table. "Here is the fee," he said, briefly. "I know that I can trust in your discretion, your loyalty,--may I add, Madame, in your kindness?" "I am ashamed," she whispered, "ashamed to take this money." She clasped her hands together in an unconscious gesture of supplication, and then asked, with a curious childish directness, "It is a great deal--can you afford it, Monsieur?" "Yes," he said, hastily; the suffering, shamed expression on her face moved him strangely. "When you next see Mr. Pargeter," she murmured, "you shall have written proof that I have carried out your wish." She tapped the table twice, sharply,--then led the way into the larger room. It was empty, but Vanderlyn, even as he entered, saw a door closing quietly. Madame d'Elphis walked across to an un-curtained window; she opened it and stepped through on to a broad terrace balcony. "Walk down the iron stairway," she said, in a low voice, "there are not many steps. A little door leads from the garden below straight into the street; the door has been left unlocked to-night." Vanderlyn held out his hand; she took it and held it for a moment. "Ah!" she said, softly, "would that _I_ had died when I was still young, still beautiful, still loved!--" XII. The bright May sun was pouring into Tom Pargeter's large smoking-room, making more alive and vivid the fantastic and brilliantly-coloured posters lining the walls. Laurence Vanderlyn, standing there in a peopled solitude, caught a glimpse of his own strained and tired face in a mirror which filled up the space between two windows, and what he saw startled him, for it seemed to him that none could look at his countenance and not see written there the tale of his anguish, remorse, and suspense. And yet he knew that now his ordeal was drawing to a close; in a few moments Pargeter was due to return from his interview with Madame d'Elphis. Walking up and down the sunny room which held for him such agonising memories of the long hours spent there during the last three days in Tom Pargeter's company, Vanderlyn lived again every moment of his own strange interview with the soothsayer. The impression of sincerity which Madame d'Elphis had produced on him had now had time to fade, and he asked himself with nervous dread whether she was, after all, likely to do what she had promised. Nay, was it in her power to lie,--or rather to tell the half-truth which was all that he had asked her to tell?