"So now you know how I came by the wound that made you two my stanch friends for life, and you can understand why I let my enemy alone, rather than bring into publicity the name of a woman I loved," he ended. "But you left the case in the hands of a detective?" said Leroy Hill. "Yes, he is to find Clifford Standish and shadow him until it is found out whether he lied to me about Miss Harding. He has full instructions to act in my place during my absence." "And this beautiful girl that you loved when you were simply Harry Hawthorne, the New York fireman, do you mean that if she is found and proved innocent that you will stoop to her now that you have come into your ancestral honors?" inquired the romantic young author, with interest. "If I were a king I would raise her to my throne!" replied the ardent lover, proudly. They applauded his faithful love, but they thought that the prospect of his happiness looked very dismal. The actor's story seemed so plausible that they feared it might be true that he had won the vacillating heart of pretty Geraldine. They looked at each other significantly, but they did not have the heart to breathe their doubts aloud. They saw that he was already unhappy enough. But they felt sure in their hearts that if the detective ever traced the movements of the persons in whom Hawthorne was interested, he would report Standish's story as true. When they had been in England a week, having witnessed the joy of the mother over the truant's return, and had been the recipients of the most charming hospitalities from the family, a letter came from the Chicago detective to Lord Putnam. But the information it contained was very meagre. He had traced Clifford Standish through a very clever disguise, but the whereabouts of Miss Harding remained a mystery. In fact, the detective was inclined to believe that the actor had lost interest in the girl he had brought to Chicago. Perhaps he had wearied of her, and left her to despair. At any rate, he was conducting a correspondence, perhaps a flirtation with a handsome governess, Miss Erroll, employed by Mrs. Fitzgerald, a wealthy widow, on Prairie avenue. The pride of Geraldine's mother and her repugnance to the name of her first husband had induced her, on bringing the girl to Chicago, to give out to the newspapers the paragraphs for publication stating that her daughter, Miss Fitzgerald, had been called home from school by the death of her father. Even in the household Geraldine bore the same name, and thus the clever detective was baffled by the simple substitution of another name; and while he had traced Clifford Standish up to his very entrance to the Prairie avenue mansion, he had no suspicion that the actor was interested in any one of the family besides the handsome governess. But the same mail had brought Lady Putnam also a letter from Chicago, and when she had read it she called her son into her boudoir, where she sat alone, saying, in a flutter of excitement: