But he was mistaken. Augustus Frayne was so much disgusted when Lorraine made his appearance that he went off for a week on a friend’s yacht. As for Clara and Nettie Frayne, they had caught beaus of their own, so the young author had a better time than he could have hoped for with the lovely girl whose living charms had driven all his heroines out of his mind, so that he said to her one day in the beautiful flower garden, where they had been walking and gathering roses: “I promised my publisher the first chapters of a new novel this week, but I have not written a line. You are accountable for this. You have driven everything else out of my head.” She glanced up and met the beautiful blue eyes fixed on her with a look that set her pulses thrilling with fear and dread--dread of the time when he would speak and tell her in words what his eyes and actions continually declared. Alas! she dared not hear it. She was not free. The thought of Carl Bernicci forced itself upon her at times, almost driving her wild with despair. “Oh, if I could only hear that he was dead, I would be so happy, so happy!” she would cry to herself, in the silence of the night; but she could not tell whether he were living or dead. Nothing had come to her out of her dead past since she had flung it behind her and fled with Mrs. Howard from New York. Longing yet dreading to hear Bayard Lorraine’s confession of love, she laughed, and answered gayly: “Come, if I am the cause, I will try to make atonement. Sit down here, and let us plan the new novel.” He sat down beside her, and looked curiously into the lovely face that showed so flawless in the clear Italian sunlight. “I shall be very glad to hear your plans,” he said gayly. She was busy arranging her roses, and did not look at him, but presently she said: “I don’t think I have originality enough to imagine anything. If I were going to write a novel, I should get some of those bloodcurdling things one reads in newspapers, and work it up into a sensational plot.” “Many authors do so,” he replied, and he took from a notebook in his pocket a little packet of clippings. “I have been collecting these for two years or more,” he said. “There is plenty of material here for a dozen novels, if one could decide upon which paragraph to use. Perhaps you will be kind enough to look over these, and make a selection for me.” He put them in her hands, noting with a thrill that they trembled as they touched his own. He sat watching the bright face as it bent over the printed slips, which she read with a pretty air of importance, one after the other, with now and then a little exclamation of surprise or horror from the rosebud lips. Suddenly he saw that she was growing very pale, and that her lips trembled. “Do not read that murder! It is too horrible for you,” he exclaimed. CHAPTER XX. A PLOT FOR A NOVEL.