He took the fingers of her white hand respectfully between the fingers and thumb of his own brown hand, and bending low with the homage of a chivalric age, and the simple sincerity of our own, kissed the white hand he held. Then, inclining his head towards the banker, he said gravely: "Will you, sir, upon this occasion of my first meeting my cousin, forego your privilege, and allow me to take her to her apartment?" The mind of the banker was dazed and paralysed, and in silence he signified his assent. Placing the hand on the black sleeve of his left arm, Sir William Midharst, of Warfinger Castle, led his orphan cousin Maud down the room, and through the doorway. As they disappeared Grey's face shrivelled up. Fortunately for him all present were too much occupied with the new baronet's arrival to notice him. The whole fabric of Grey's rearing seemed to topple over and tumble into dust as these two figures went through the doorway. He was guardian it was true, but his power did not extend to his forbidding her to take that arm, to go through that doorway with that young man, to walk up to the altar-rails with any man whatever. "Idiot that you have been, Alexander Midharst; you deserve nothing better than that your daughter's fortune should be lost!" Then he stood a long time immovable. At last the thought of the stake he had put down in this game rushed in upon his mind, and he was once more on the top of that Tower of Silence, under the dull sky with the Dead. He now stood in the awful solitude of blood. He strode on through a realm of endless silence and limitless sand. For him there could never be any change here; always that maddening silence--always those unconquerable leagues of sand. Never any variety except---- He suddenly started and shouted. There had been a change in the monotony; for over his shoulder--not the one at which Maud had stood--over the right shoulder suddenly peered the face of his murdered victim. With a pang of apprehension he became alive to his situation, and looked suddenly round. He was alone. All the others had left, and it was growing dark. CHAPTER III. "COUSIN MAUD----" "NO; MAUD." When the young baronet reached the corridor he said in a grave sedate voice: "I knew your name was Maud; and I knew your poor father did not like me. I am sure you will believe me when I tell you I never saw him in all my life, never saw you until to-day, and never gave him any reason I know of to dislike me. It so happened I was heir to the property; it so happened I was poor. I could not help the former; I tried to do all I could to help the latter, and took an appointment in Egypt. It was such an appointment as a gentleman might take. You, Cousin Maud, had no feeling against me because I happened to be next to the title and estates?" "Oh, no," answered the girl quickly, in a tremulous half-frightened voice, without looking up. "And now that I have come to see you, cousin, you have no feeling against me?"