In my dream I thought she stabbed me to the heart, and I awoke, and with sharp pain tingling through my breast, sat up in bed, and looked around me.

      A grey dawn was stealing through the curtained room, the door swung idly as in a draught, as touched by some hurrying figure, or hasty hand, and I knew that a human presence had just passed out, as one intuitively does feel such things in the air, and I sprang from my bed, and looked down the long corridor with its rows of shut doors on either side, blank and dead, just as if no lives throbbed and pulsed behind them, though none, thought I, had surely been awakened in such ghastly fashion as I.

      Sybilla slept at the other end of the vast caravanserai, and yet into one of those closed doors she must have dashed and hidden herself, for it was impossible to get out of sight in the brief instants between my awakening and running to the door, for it was Sybilla — no one else hated me, looked murder at me as her eyes looked last night, when Ben and I sat together in the hotel garden, and she came stealing upon us like a devil-possessed shadow.

      I shut the door (the hasp was a good one, and had been safely fastened over night), and went straight up to my mirror, and in the dim and chilly light I drew aside my nightdress, and looked for the wound that should be there — and was not. For I knew, just as certainly as though I saw myself transparent in the glass, that some fine, slender thing, had been buried in my side, that it had hurt me fiercely when thrust through my flesh, that the stab was hurting me even now, though the pain was gradually lessening. I knew also that it was mortal hurt; for whether I had happened to move at the moment the blow was inflicted, or the hand itself had faltered dealing it, the obvious intention of the person had been frustrated, and pain I might have to suffer, and further trouble might come of that foreign body, but at least I was alive, and able to work to bring the guilt home to mine enemy. For I had not argued, I did not merely reason; the dream of Sybilla stabbing me, the waking, and my instant pursuit of her, were all coherent parts of a whole that fitted in exactly with what I knew and half expected of her. As the light strengthened, and at last, with sudden leap the day had come, I looked again in the glass, and saw a tiny red speck on my flesh, just though I had pricked myself deeply with a needle or pin, and the mark remained, that when I fetched a very fine cambric handkerchief, and applied it, left a minute blood fleck en the handkerchief, to prove that the hurt was there. I got back into bed, and thought hard for a good hour what I should do, of how I should bring it home to her, of what I was to say to Ben, who would be overwhelmed at the consequences to me of his playing the fool with Sibylla, for he had played the fool, aa a man always will if a beautiful woman lets him, all the more when he has no particular respect for her.

      And I kept him waiting week at that Harrogate Hotel where he was to meet the Mater and me, and as he did not drink the nauseous waters, or take the evil-smelling baths, or play golf which might have kept him out of mischief (for he was above all things a thorough sportsman, and in a general way greatly preferred horses to women) he had plenty of idle hours on his hands.

      So, while he kicked his heels and waited, Sybilla (I always thought of her by that name which smelt of black magic, and thoroughly became her) cut in, and perhaps because his fair brown looks made such a contrast to her own dark, rich colouring, she fell madly in love with him, and it was everywhere said that they made the handsomest couple in the town. Perhaps we women don't sufficiently realise that a man, hard on women in general, is bound to be hard on the one, when his brief love-fit is over, and his mind has swung back to its habitual attitude towards us, but when a man has a soft spot in his heart for a woman (probably a delightful mother has made this) it cuts two ways, and the man may give you serious trouble, though if you can keep him, he will be very, very good to you.

      And Ben was just a man, and warm to his finger-tips with heaps of snap and vitality, and when Sybilla made all the running with him, he could no more have snubbed, or been unkind to her than he could beat her, and then — I came, and she saw that while he had but played with her, with me it was deadly earnest, for he had loved me for years and years, though I had never promised to marry him, and had come up here to ask me, for the last time, to be his wife.

      He owed me no loyalty, and yet I think he would have shown it, had not Sybilla for the time stamped her own fierce, passionate nature on his weaker, masculine one, though all her power vanished from the moment when she came in, radiant, to table d'hote and found Ben divided from her by my mother, and on Ben's other side, myself.

      She leaned over to look at me, as she nodded and laughed at Ben, then sank back in her chair, re-assured. For I was small, and light, and neat, not pretty at all saved to those who loved me, and such a beauty as she was, I must have seemed a very insignificant rival indeed, not even worth thinking about.

      Ben took no notice of her, not because he meant to be unkind, but simply because he could not think of two women at once, and he was entirely taken with me. Man is not so much a cruel, or even a selfish animal, as a thoughtless one, though the amount of suffering he inflicts is just the same, but then he does not see it, and his world goes round merrily on the principle that "what the eye don't view, the heart don't rue."

      When dinner was over, Miss Calhoun got up to go, and turned a beckoning glance over her shoulder at Ben, that was once so assured, and so natural, as evidently to be part of the usual evening programme, but Ben did not see it, or else did not want to, for he was looking at me.

      I saw her face, and later when she had wrapped some lace about her swart head, and was walking in the garden waiting for him to come to her, it darkened still more as Ben and I passed her close, and he piloted me to a quiet corner where he took up another link of that old, old story that has no end, nor yet beginning, for in one unbroken circle it rings the world. And yet I was uneasy, though not jealous, and a little angry too, for I thought a man should be as loyal as a woman — and this the other woman will not let him be — for there is always another woman.

      Well, Ben was Ben, and I loved him, but never let him know it, which perhaps was the reason why he loved me. And possibly if this woman had not been so much handsomer, and so much more clever than I was (as I soon found out) I might have scorned to contest him with her, but she had put me on my mettle, and I knew the people in the hotel were making bets on us, and I did not feel disposed to let her gobble my boy up, even if he submitted to be so gobbled — which I doubted.

      For a man of birth, and breeding, and taste, does not as a rule want to marry the woman, however pretty, who shines in boudoir hours; wants the one with whom he can face his equals, and about whom there can be no possible question that she is the correct article. She may be plain, even, but about her intonation and style there must be no mistake. In whatever part of the world, or in whatever company she might find herself, her position must be obvious at a glance, and distinction, which is infinitely beyond beauty or perfection of figure, and by far the most precious gift of all in women, must be hers. And Ben always declared that no one ever looked as smart and well groomed, or dressed as quietly and well as I did; but I am sure the good blood in my veins had a lot to do with it, and it was my forefathers and foremothers he should have praised, not me, though I hope I had my own individuality to back them.

      Sometimes I said to Ben, "Go and talk to that poor woman," but he would not go, and only a morning and evening salutation passed between them.

      But he seemed quite indifferent, as most men are, to the suffering of a person whom he was no longer interested. I thanked God had never known what jealousy such as hers was, no, nor yet passion, she, with her Southern blood, reckoned love, though I little guessed what her revenge would be.

      I was not in a good temper, and treated him badly on the whole, but he was never a yard from petticoat during the day, and even in waiting for me at seven in the morning, when I went down with the poor Mater to the Pump room, where a full blast of horrible smells met us on the threshold, and all but slew us. Ben declared that he knew that smell — he had made acquaintance with it when unsuccessfully contesting a constituency. He accompanied us on our morning trot round the Bog Valley gardens, sweet and fresh in the morning air, and in the afternoon he insisted en taking me to the Stray, and worrying me with entreaties to say, "Yes," a word I could not bring myself to utter, for Master Ben had clearly not been behaving at all well.

      Thus passed a week, and then it suddenly got about in the hotel that the fell deed was done, and that Ben and I were within definite sight of being married — and marred — from man's point of view, what is the same thing spelt differently.

      And Sybilla believed it, so much I knew from her face that like white fire stole menacing on us through the dusk as we sat last night in the garden. Desperate, mad with love, she had during the night conceived the murderous plan that at early morning she had tried to put into execution, and had she succeeded, might have become Ben's wife in the end, after all.

      I was still thrashing matters out my mind when a clock struck half-past six, and my mother's maid hurried in, bringing my tea. She was not so neat as usual, and all agog with some news that I judged to be evil, as while pretending to look shocked, she was really delighted as servants always are when able to announce one of the real tragedies of life.

      "Such a dreadful affair, Miss Effie!" she said, as she set the tray down beside me, "some madman or burglar got into Miss Calhoun's room early this morning, and half strangled her — the chambermaid found her unconscious, and with her throat all mauled, a few minutes ago!"

      I put another lump of sugar in my tea and answered nothing. It was easy to make marks upon one's throat, and also to seem in a swoon, when one was as clever as Miss Calhoun. And she had no jewels worth stealing, nothing to tempt a burglar to violence, neither for the matter of that, had I.

      Annette looked deeply disappointed at having given me no thrill, and glanced at the door outside, where sounded voices, and a sudden commotion, as if a blast of fresh news had been blown down the corridor, and sought urgently to get every keyhole.

      "Excuse me. Miss Effie," she said, and vanished, presently to reappear with uplifted hands, and freshly charged with new intelligence.

      "Mrs. Wilson has seen the murderer, Miss Effie!" she announced, breathlessly, — "she's just three doors from you, on the right hand side of the corridor. When it was barely light, she woke up, and saw man in the room — he had his back turned to her, and was peeping through the keyhole, and seemed to be listening hard. She called out to him, but he took no notice, and without looking round, he suddenly opened the door and disappeared. What mercy he didn't get in here, or into your ma's room — or mine," — she added with an hysterical scream.

      "Be quiet!" I said sternly, for I was thinking hard; it was at dawn when Mrs. Wilson saw Sybilla dressed as a man. When I wakened and pursued her, she hid close by. What a fool the woman was to attempt such a thing without chloroform — but perhaps she was in a hurry, and could not wait, or else she was sure of accomplishing her end, and dead men, and women, too, tell no tales.

      My mother knocked on the wall at that moment, and Annette opened the door between the two rooms, and went in. I allowed the Frenchwoman ten minutes' enjoyment in retailing horrors, then I put on my dressing gown, and cut gossip short by joining them.

      "Why, child," exclaimed my mother, "how white you look! One would, think you had been attacked, not Miss Calhoun. But I hear she's only badly scratched — and she'll know what to do as she is more than half a doctor herself."

      "Who told you that?" I cried, startled, and indeed without some knowledge of anatomy, she would have hardly tried to settle me with that long fine needle that I seemed distinctly feel in my body at that moment.

      "Her aunt. She is not a bad old woman, though her looks are against her," said my mother, sipping her tea. I had felt unreasonably vexed at her making friends with that woman's relation as at some disloyalty to myself, but then mother did not like Ben, and his flirtations, or reflect that her own delay in coming had left him at the mercy of Sybilla.

      "Miss Calhoun meant to be a woman doctor, but somebody left her a fortune, and naturally she cut medicine. And then she fell in love with Ben," added mother rather maliciously, for Annette had disappeared to join the saturnalia of gossip, and procure a nauseous dose of water, as mother was not going down to the Pump room that morning.

      "And in spite of her fortune, Ben did not fall in love with Miss Calhoun," I said composedly, and then I went back to my room, for if formerly parents hesitated about telling things to their children, nowadays it is the children who doubt if their parents are strong and sensible enough to bear the shock of what they themselves stand easily, so I held my peace.

      But five minutes before the breakfast bell rang I knocked at Mrs. Wilson's door, and found her ready dressed, but pale and decidedly jumpy, as if she had had a bad fright.

      "Do tell me about it," I said, taking her hand, and she did, and wonderfully like what Annette had told me, her story was, which spoke well for the maid's powers as "raconteuse."

      "What was he like," I said, "fat or thin?"

      "O!" she said, " I was too flurried — but he was rather fat. I noticed it when he was stooping down peeping through the keyhole — decidedly fat for a man."

      "Of course," I said. "Women always look indecent in men's dress — Vesta Tilley is the only woman I have ever seen wear a boy's or man's clothes as a boy or man — and look either."

      She looked bewildered and I groaned, for nothing in the world gives one half so much trouble as the fools who encompass one's every step in it.

      "It was a man, not a woman, my dear — and I am told Miss Calhoun saw him when he made an attempt on her life —"

      "In the glass," I muttered to myself. "How tall was he?" aloud.

      "I can't say," she cudgelled what she called her brains for a moment, "but certainly not tall. He had a soft hat rammed down on his head, and dark clothes, with a patch on them behind. I was too frightened to notice more than that. When he had gone, I locked the door, and lay quaking till tea came. You may be thankful he did not visit your room as well mine."

      "How do you know he did not come to me first, and that he hid himself there because I was close after him?" I said, but she only smiled inanely, and then we went down to breakfast, where nothing save the night's events was talked about over the table. I found Ben rather silent and preoccupied, and I saw him look several times across to Sybilla's empty place as if he missed, or were thinking of her, and I thought how like a man it was to inflict intense mental agony on a woman without even glancing at his work, then wince if a physical mark were made her white flesh.

      Her grim old aunt was there, looking just as usual, making an excellent breakfast, and turning deaf ear to the questions that threatened to disturb it. It struck me at once that she knew what I suspected, or at least part of it, and there had never seemed to be much love lost between the two women, there never is between the false and the true.

      "You seem anxious about Miss Calhoun," I said drily to Ben.

      He turned quickly, and looked me the face. I can't say what he found in mine, but his changed and hardened, and his blue eyes flashed angrily.

      "Good God!" he said, almost in a whisper, "I believe you're glad! And that poor girl might have been strangled, in her bed!"

      "But she wasn't!" I said, coolly.

      He muttered something that sounded like "what brutes women can be to one another," and I thought of that needle whatever it was, sticking in my flesh, that might very probably kill me some day, and laughed unfeelingly. He had not even noticed how ill I looked, or I might have forgiven him, as it was I thought him hateful.

      At that moment there was a stir, a buzz, a thrill of excitement; and Miss Calhoun walked quietly down the long room between the tables, and sat down opposite us, for she had recently changed her place so as to face, and watch us. After all, she had pluck; she could easily have remained in her room and avoided me, but she elected to come down to brazen out, and before looking at me she glanced across Ben, and smiled. It was the first salutation she had made, and I saw him flush a little, and he leaned forward, and made eager inquiry about her adventure.

      She wore a fresh white, cambric gown, and had swathes filmy yellow lace about her throat, up to the tips of her ears, and she herself was creamily white, and her mouth was very red, while her great black eyes glowed as she looked at and answered Ben.

      Beautiful as she always was, to-day it was as if some vital had touched and kindled her, probably danger, and she, was gloriously, alive at every point, and made others alive too. She looked like some tropical flower full of hot sunshine and perfume, and colour, and suddenly I saw myself a small, slight, pale shadow beside that warm personality, blotted out by her as the starlight is extinguished by the sun — what did bad style matter in a moment of tragedy?

      "I woke at dawn," she said, leaning across the table to address Ben "to find a man's hands around my throat. I fought desperately, then lost consciousness, and remember no more."

      "But you saw him — you would recognise him again?" cried Ben.

      "Yes. He was short and dark" — I involuntarily smiled, out loud as seemed, for Ben turned, and looked me, and in a brief flicker her eyes met mine — and defied me. I glanced up and down the table for a face that had meaning in it. Some one else might have seen her in the corridor, for to walk undetected past a double row of shut doors any one of which may open at any moment, is just the one eventuality from which no amount of calculation can possibly ensure one. Divorce cases would be fewer, and people enjoy an absolute immunity from detection, were there not this qualite negligeable to reckon with hotels. But I found no accusing glance anywhere save in Ben's eyes, who I think at that moment positively disliked me. There was nothing he was so keen on as humanity in men (for in this as all else, he was a true sportsman) and womanliness in women, and I had thoroughly disillusionised him. I see now that I must have appeared to him as a jealous, unfeeling cat, but I did not see it then, I felt only the superhuman cleverness and wickedness of the woman, and how next to impossible it would be to bring her guilt home to her, and my blood boiled with rage.

      And then, how did she manage it? The lace had slipped little away on one side of her throat, and across the flesh showed a jagged scarlet tear such as a man's nails might make, and Ben was looking pitifully at it with all a strong man's horror of seeing wounds upon a woman. And in one lightning moment I became aware of two things, both totally unsuspected — the first that I really loved Ben, and the other, that I was furiously jealous of Sybilla Calhoun, even as this morning she had been murderously jealous me. The elemental force and directness of my feelings made disguise impossible, and I compelled her eyes to meet mine, and she read my heart in my face, and rejoiced, as one who has been put to the torture exults at seeing his enemy enduring the same pangs. As I rose quietly up, and went away unnoticed by Ben, I knew that if her cunning weapon had indeed missed my heart, his newborn disgust and indifference towards me, had in very truth found, and pierced through and through.

---

CHAPTER II.

      Six months had elapsed, and Ben and I had to all appearance looked our last on each other when we met, and quarrelled, and fiercely parted after breakfast on that summer's morning which had witnessed such strange happenings our hotel.

      He thought my behaviour to Sybilla cruel and unwomanly, and when I told him I was positive she had made those marks on her throat herself, and that it was she who, masquerading in a man's dress had hidden herself in Mrs. Wilson's room, he lost his temper altogether, and hinted that much jealousy had made me mad.

      This cooled me, and I told him that there could be jealousy without love, and challenged him to point to one single proof of the latter that I had ever given him, and he gloomily admitted he could not, and somehow the words stuck in my throat that would clear me of unwomanliness, for he had hurt me, and I wanted to hurt him, and she should know nothing until, whether he married her or no, I could prove her guilt to his face, and show him what manner of woman she was. We parted furious with each other, and I left mother to continue her course of baths, and went up to Aunt Alicia at York, by the midday train. Ben did not know I was going, and mother wrote that he was a picture of misery, but follow me he did not, for when he left on the following day, he went further north for the Twelfth.

      Some detectives came down from town, but discovered very little, except that the outrage had undoubtedly been committed by some person in the hotel — probably a man servant, and Sybilla's self-inflicted scratches healed quickly, and the only person who had been signally worsted in the whole business was I. For I had lost my lover, and gained instead a long, wicked, very fine needle, that handled by a skilled anatomist had all but despatched me, and though stuck harmlessly at present in my tissues, might at any moment start off on a tour round my body, and ultimately arrive at the spot first aimed at — my heart.

      The York doctors laughed at my story (abbreviated), but passing round town on my way to Cowes, the Rontgen rays soon settled that point, and my character for veracity was saved. Yet I could not prove that Sybilla was the person who had put that needle where it was to denounce her would be only to place her still more on her guard, and Ben had not troubled to seek me, I was far too proud to seek him with the truth.

      In the months that followed I heard of him sometimes, but we never met, and Sybilla I saw once or twice in Bond-street with the grim old aunt in attendance, so I did not think Ben and she were engaged, or they would have been together. But I have noticed that when a thing has to be, fate is suddenly very kind, and does her utmost to further it — with unerring hand she deals the cards, and lo, the coup made. It is done on the stage where all the dramatis personæ are brought simultaneously to the same place at the same hour, and we onlookers from the stalls say how wildly improbable it all is, and yet teal life is stranger often than any play, and without any pulling of strings the flesh and blood puppets meet, as it were, miraculously, from different parts of the world, and act their parts in the real human drama. And so it happened that quite suddenly that I had got the chance that for six miserable months I had sought in vain, and it came to be purest accident, as most good things do, which really means that fate in a good temper has made an errant knock at one door's. I had kept away all this time from Clara Cambridge, because she was my dearest friend, and I feared the questions she would ask me about Ben, that I might meet him there. But one day early in February I called and she rushed at me and reproached me, but seeing that I volunteered no confidences invited none.

      "Dick has gone mad on the Rontgen rays," she said presently, "and has actually had a room fitted in the basement with the apparatus, and has taught me how to use it, and we take shadowgraphs of our friends' hands, and even look through one another sometimes (though most people shy at that, just as if they had dark secrets they feared to reveal) and look through the assistant instead."

      A wild thought darted through my brain which worked with lightning quickness. If only she knew Sybilla, if she would only get her here . . and at that very moment Clara said

      "Miss Calhoun is coming here to-morrow," she said, and stared when I clutched her. "Do you know her? She is no friend of mine, but Dick asked her; she is rather a swell about anatomy, and bones and things, you know — and he's awfully proud of having the biggest coil in England, and he wants to show it her."

      I drew a long deep breath, verily truth is stranger than fiction, and already I saw mine enemy delivered over into my hand.

      "Listen," I said, and I told her the story, right through from beginning to end, and then I told what (for without her help I could do nothing) I proposed to do.

      She was a very clever woman, with immense self-control, but even she gasped little at my daring plot, and began to point out the difficulties in the way.

      "There's Ben," she said, "I don't think he will come if he knows he will meet Miss Calhoun. Probably he knows her intentions towards him are strictly dishonourable — surely you didn't quarrel with him about her?" she added curiously.

      "Ask him here," I cried, "tell him any lie — promise him what you like — only get him here at the same time as her, Sybilla."

      "I'll tell him the truth — that he'll find you here," she said significantly, then bent her brows in thought.

      "We can manage the assistant," she said, "but we have two things to guard against. One or other of these two persons may not turn up, or Dick may take it into his head to be master of the ceremonies, and in the latter case I couldn't hide you downstairs, nor could you substitute yourself for the assistant, and be looked through without his knowledge."

      "Well send him a telegram," I said, "from the Queen or one of the boys to say he's dying — we can't possibly risk his being here."

      "O! you little brute!" she said, "one of our dear boys indeed! I'll ask him not to be here — pretend you and Ben are going to make it up — why don't you?" she added, then her face became very grave, and she kissed me and shuddered.

      "It's horrible story," she said, "and to-morrow will be more horrible still, if all works out properly. And that needle," she touched my side gently, and timed pale, "it must have done you almost as much harm as quarrelling with Ben."

      I shook my head. Strange to say, the needle had caused me next to no uneasiness. Ben had much.

      "You must write urgent notes to them both," I said. "Promise them both anything — tell her Ben will be there — only they must come."

      But it was not till long afterwards that I knew what she had promised Ben and what brought him before the hour fixed, but when I reproached her, she only said saucily that she had seen how I was dying of love for him, and felt so sorry for me. Then we went downstairs and interviewed the assistant, who was a very intelligent man, and taciturn, who did not even look mystified at what we had planned, with his help, to do, and yet almost everything depended on his quickness and nerve. Then we turned out the lights, and did half an hour's smart rehearsing, for it is not so easy to calculate distances, and walk in the right direction in the dark.

      At four o'clock next day I was safely hidden in the cupboard, and the assistant waiting in the electric-lit room, and almost immediately we heard the swish of silk, and the tap of feet coming down the stone stairs, with a heavier tread following, and in another moment I heard Sybilla's voice, and then Ben's, exclaiming at the business-like room with its grim apparatus, that somehow suggested electrocution. Then came Clara's perfectly cool voice explaining this and that to Ben. for she understood the working of the whole thing as well as her husband did, and spent hours with him here of evenings after the assistant had left.

      "Miss Calhoun," I heard her say, as she turned a lever, and the room trembled with the steady throb, throb as of an engine, and the green light rushed hissing into big glass vessel that was to make flesh and blood transparent, "your turn first, you will look through the assistant?"

      "I have often done this before, so I know what do," said Sybilla. Her voice sounded tired, not at all as if she were standing beside the man who loved her, and Ben's voice had been singularly listless, too, as if some heavy disappointment weighed him down. Perhaps the noise drowned her reply, for Clara explained.

      "The assistant will put cloak over himself and you, and stand with his back to the rays; you will hold a screen in front of you, and he will be visible on it — but first — lights out!"

      In a moment the room was black as pitch, and as I emerged from my cupboard door, the assistant's hand pounced on mine, and without a false step he swiftly led me to the other side of the boiling, whirling azure light, threw the cloak over my head and Sybilla's, put the screen upright into her hands, and for the next few seconds there was absolute darkness and silence save for that monotonous throbbing that seemed to shake the ground under our feet.

      "I see something," said Sybilla's voice speaking sharply through her mufflings, "something unusual. There is a foreign body in this man, narrowly missing his heart, it looks like an extraordinarily slender instrument — a wire — or a long needle" — her voice faltered, stopped suddenly.

      "Lights!" cried Clara, suddenly; the electric glare, as I tore off the black mantle that covered Sybilla, revealed my face, and she shrieked madly at the sight of me, and fought hard to escape as I gripped her arm.

      "You saw it," I said, "the long needle with which you tried to stab me to the heart that morning at the hotel only I awakened just in time — and your hand slipped. You then inflicted wounds on your own throat to make people believe we both had the same assailant in case I told my story — and the man's clothes you wore as a disguise and which have since been indentified by Mrs. Wilson (in whose room you hid) by means of the patch on them, are here" — and I took from the assistant's hand a bundle, and held it up before her. "I stole them from your room while you were downstairs at breakfast, and every link in the chain of evidence is complete. Confess!" cried, as Ben stepped to my side, whispering

      "My poor, poor little girl!"

      She gasped, and writhed away, neither looking at Ben or me, but at the assistant who stood by the door watching the scene gravely, for he had supposed the whole thing to be a mere practical joke and this was deadly earnest.

      "Is that a constable?" she said, with grey lips "here to arrest me? If I confess will you let go?"

      "Yes," I said, with Ben's hand holding mine.

      "I confess," she said sullenly. "I always travel with a case of medical instruments, and had with me a very long fine needle with which people are often killed in Italy, as it leaves no mark externally, or at most not more than a pin-prick. Had you not wakened, and moved aside when you did, I should have killed you — and for nothing. Dead or absent it would be all one — he let me love him, and he loved you. Curse you!" she shrieked out, then ran like a thing pursued of Death out of the room and up the stairs, and so out of Ben's life and mine for ever.

      "But you can't marry me, Ben," I said upstairs, five minutes later, "no man could be expected to take a needle cushion to his bosom! If that bit of steel takes it into its head to walk, it may touch the place for which it was originally intended — and I shall die."

      Ben's face clouded, but only for a moment, love, and more especially young love, has always deemed himself more than a match for Death, and more than once he has won.

      "Then if time is so short, hadn't we better get married to-morrow, darling?" he said.