A sigh escaped from Dinah's lips, and she drew herself up as she clung more tightly to her father. Two of her protectors gone that night, but there was still a third, and a feeling of confidence strengthened her heart as she gripped her father's arm. "Sooner or later I shall square accounts with this man," said the Major, as he walked slowly toward the door. "Oh, if I only knew!" "If I only knew. If I only knew!" The words kept on repeating themselves in Dinah's brain as she sought her room that night, till she found herself repeating them--"If he only knew--if he only knew!" She had not commenced undressing, and in her agitated, nervous state every sound about the house attracted her attention, so that she listened eagerly as she suddenly heard a light tapping sound, followed by--"Yes, sir, what is it?" "I didn't want to disturb you, Martha; but have you moved my gun?" "No, sir. It's in the corner of your study between the window and the bookcase." "No, it is not there, but I am certain it was this afternoon." "I'm sure it was there to-night, sir, just before Mr Reed went away." "Very well, good-night," said the Major; and he went back into the little study, and looked carefully round again. "Why, of course!" he exclaimed, "I must have stood it in my room." CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. THE TARE SOWING. A man was going through the street with his pole extinguishing the gas lamps, as the hansom cab bearing Clive Reed went along at a sharp trot toward Russell Square. The waning light looked ghastly and strange, and well in keeping with his anxious state of mind, for in spite of all his genuine love for Dinah, it was impossible not to feel a thrill of misery akin to despair when reminded of one with whom so much of his boyhood and the later past had been mingled. "Poor, passionate, weak girl!" he said to himself again and again, as he journeyed on, and his heart was full of sympathy for her and indignation against his brother, whom he connected with the trouble, whatever it might be. "Sick unto death," he muttered. "Heartbroken and despairing after finding him out. Oh, how can a man be so base?" Then all kinds of projects had flashed across his mind as to what might be done. Janet would certainly separate sooner or later from Jessop, and when she did, as the Doctor had intimated, she would return to her old home, and then why should not Dinah help him to soften her hard lot? "No," he said, directly after. "It would be madness--impossible. Janet's is not the nature to assimilate with Dinah's. I am not so weak and blind to all her faults as I was then. Poor girl! Poor girl! Her life wrecked, and by my own brother too." At last!