After the funeral was over he drove to a fashionable street, and stopping at a fine hotel, sent up his card to a person whom he designated as Mr. Colville. After a brief delay he was shown up to that gentleman's room. Mr. Colville was a rather handsome but dissipated-looking man, of perhaps forty years. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion, and the elegance of his apparel, his costly diamonds, as well as the luxuriousness of the furniture about him, betokened a man of wealth and ease. He removed his cigar from his dark mustached lips, and said, with a light laugh: "Ah, Pratt, what deviltry are you up to now?" "I have just come from attending a funeral," Doctor Pratt answered sedately, as he seated himself in a satin-cushioned arm-chair. "A funeral!" Mr. Colville started and grew pale. "Was it that of--of Miss Lawrence?" "The same," was the calm reply. "Ah! beautiful Lily--so you are gone to be the bride of death--to be clasped to her icy heart! Well, better so," said Colville, bitterly. "I wonder at your coldness," said Doctor Pratt, eying him keenly. "I thought you loved her to desperation." "Man, man--I did, I did!" cried out Colville, starting up and pacing the floor wildly, "but what of that? She would not have my love. She laughed it to scorn, and was about to give herself to my haughty rival. Great Heaven! I was nearly crazed by the knowledge. It was a happy madness that armed her hand against her own life! I am glad she is dead. I would rather she were the prey of the worm than given to the arms of another." "Sit down, sit down," said the physician, shortly. "Calm yourself, or you will fall in a fit as did your horror-struck rival on hearing the dreadful news of her death." "Fell in a fit, did he?" said Colville, stopping short in his hurried walk. "I wish he had died. But, no! he might have rejoined her then in some better land than this." "If there be a better land, which I doubt," said Pratt, with a cold sneer. Colville threw himself down into an arm-chair and looked moodily across at the physician. "Well, what have you come after?" he asked, abruptly and testily. "You have put me up to so many devilish schemes that I always expect some villany when I see your satanic countenance." "I have put my freedom in jeopardy this week for the sake of your happiness," Doctor Pratt answered with assumed indifference, "but if you take such a high tone I can leave with my secret untold." "A secret!" said Colville, looking up with some interest; "your secrets are always worth hearing, doctor. Let me have it, I beg you." "This one is worth hearing, any way," said Doctor Pratt grimly, and, rising, he turned the door-key in the lock, after looking out suspiciously into the wide hall. Returning, he drew his chair close to Colville's and continued, calmly: "I cannot afford to give you this secret, Colville, I will sell it to you for the pretty little sum of ten thousand dollars--a mere bagatelle, that, to a man of your wealth."