"Pray explain yourself," he answered. "I give you my word of honor that your speech and manner simply mystify me. What dreadful fate awaits you, Mrs. Vance?" She turned upon him a moment with flashing eyes, then looked down again as she answered in low, intense tones: "Do you not understand, Lance, what my pride shrinks from telling you in plain terms?--the bitter truth that my stay with you last night at the Dabney Hotel has irretrievably compromised my fair fame in the eyes of the carping and censorious world?" She paused, and Lancelot Darling sat still and motionless like one stricken with paralysis. "Oh! that is impossible," he said at last. "No one knows of our accident." "All New York will know it to-morrow," she said, bitterly. "Ill news flies apace. To-morrow the finger of scorn will be lifted against me on every hand. Perhaps even Mr. Lawrence will turn me out of doors." The reproach and passion had died out of her voice. It was full of pathetic pity for her own sorrow. "Surely it cannot be as bad as you fear," said Lance, startled and troubled. "Alas! it is too sadly true!" she said, mournfully. "What can I do to remedy your trouble?" he inquired, his native chivalry rising to the surface in defense of the woman he had unwittingly injured. "What _can_ a man do in such cases?" she asked, in a low and meaning tone. "Marry, I suppose?" he said, after a long hesitation. "Yes," she answered, quietly. Silence fell for the space of a few moments. Lance drove on mechanically, drawing his breath hard like a hunted animal. He roused himself at last and spoke in a cold, constrained, unnatural tone. "Then I will marry you, Mrs. Vance," he said. "I cannot promise to love you, nay, I can hardly give you the respect I would think the natural due of some other woman. But since I have injured your honor I will give you the shelter of my name." "Thanks, a thousand thanks," she murmured. CHAPTER XXXIII. Mr. Shelton did not think it expedient to communicate to Mr. Lawrence the startling fact that the beloved daughter whom he mourned as dead was yet numbered among the living. He had not the heart to give him this joyful assurance and then offset it by the statement that she was immured somewhere in the walls of a prison in the power of two wicked and unscrupulous men. He determined, if possible, to trace out her whereabouts and rescue her before revealing the whole truth to the sorrowing father. He therefore compromised the matter by telling a portion only of the truth to the banker. Namely, that he had traced the body of the young girl to a certain house in the suburbs, but that it had been removed thence when he went to look for it, and that he was following up a new clew which he confidently hoped would soon lead to its recovery. He also added the fact that Doctor Pratt and Harold Colville were the guilty parties in the matter.