A young wife in her night dress praying beside her bed. The prayer a jumble of appeals, questions, lamentations, and sobs.

The room was a severe, old-fashioned one with a four-poster, and red curtains hanging from a massive canopy which reached to the low ceiling. On the dressing table candles burned, one on either side of the large oval mirror. The girl's pretty clothes were strewn about in confusion, showing that she had undressed hastily with her mind on other things. Her hair was tumbling over her eyes, and gathered in two long plaits, one on either shoulder--as Jack loved to see them. She looked more girlish than in her modish satin gown earlier in the evening. Her eyes were dry; but her throat was thick with sobs that seemed to be choking her. Her soft white hands were clenched upon the pink coverlet, twining and working in harmony with the twisting of her troubled brain.

She had locked the door, and the key was on the bed. Jack had refused to listen to her denial, and was coming for the explanation which she could not give. He was coming to his wife to look into happy, bright eyes, and hear her confess that she was once more happy in his love.

To risk detection thus was reckless; it was foolish; but it was an enterprise to Jack's taste. Stolen kisses were ever sweetest, and he was determined that the clouds which had risen between them should be speedily scattered by satisfactory explanations. His curiosity to know the reason for her change of attitude was stronger than his discretion. He would not be guided by his wise little wife.

"I shan't let him in. O God, help me!--guide me--give me courage to go where I can never see him more," she prayed. "Don't let me ruin him and be a drag upon him all his life till he grows to hate me. He knows I love him--he will never doubt that. And he will understand--he must understand--that it was for his good I am doing this. My father is a bad man--a cruel man. He is only using me for his own ends. He is weaving a web about this house. O God, you can understand. Guide me, help me, show me where to go! I am so very much alone."

There was a rustle on the corridor outside. Her heart stood still; her breath strangled in her throat, and she could not extinguish the second candle. She looked round in panic.

A regular knocking at her door, soft and steady, yet dangerously loud. She made a sound in moving towards the door, and knocked over a scent bottle. The person outside evidently heard.

"Mabel, I'm coming in--may I?"

It was Lady Hester. The voice was husky and hardly recognizable. Mabel tried to answer, but the words choked her. She wanted to temporize and make an excuse; but ere she could articulate the door opened, and Lady Hester, in a long cream dressing gown, and with her hair untouched since retiring to rest, entered and closed the door after her. The mother could not keep away from her child.

"Mabel, my dear," she cried, extending her arms with strange tenderness; "Mabel, I wanted to see you before I went to sleep."

The girl came to her obediently. There was a strange, illuminating, beatific expression in those big, tearless eyes. They seemed to be telling her something.

Lady Hester folded her daughter to her heart and dropped her head upon her shoulder. She kissed the soft, girlish cheek, and passed her hands over the turbulent hair. Then she drew away and stood with her back to the candle, in order that the light might fall on Mabel's face and reveal the eyes that had always seemed to be saying something to her that she could not understand.

"My child--my child!" she murmured, and kissed her again, holding her tight. Then the flood gates opened--tears at last.

Still holding the girl from her at arm's length and looking into her face, she spoke with more calmness. "You are going to marry Jack, Mabel. That's what I came to see you about. The Bishop seems to have thought out and arranged everything--in his own mind--in rather a hurried way. I don't want you to think me unkind, or mysterious, but--but I want you to put it off for a little while. A nice, long engagement, so that all things may be straightened out."

"I don't think I am going to marry Jack at all," said Mabel quietly.

"No? You have quarrelled, then?" asked Lady Hester, with very little show of surprise, and striving in vain to repress the excitement in her voice.

"You see, when we were engaged I didn't know--whom I was."

"Then you know now. He has told you?"

"Ah, then I am right," sobbed Mabel. "You, too, know the kind of man my father is. He is not fit to be in this house. I am not fit to be here. Jack must never be ruined by me."

"So the cross is bearing you down too," said Lady Hester impressively. "What has he told you?" This anxiously, and with her eyes averted.

"He has told me nothing. I've guessed how he lives, how he must always live. Who I am, and whether I have any right to the name I bear, I don't know. Sometimes I hope that I may not be his child at all."

"Would to God you were not, Mabel! Oh, my darling, you are----"

The confession would not come. The agonized mother flung her arms about the girl and held her to her breast again, twining her arms tightly and impulsively about her, but she could not speak the amazing words.

Mabel broke away at last, sobbing as badly as Lady Hester.

"You knew him. You must have known him before to-night," faltered the girl. "Tell me, what do you know about him? You told me about a man once, a villain who took you into strange company and showed you another side of life to that you were used to. Did you ever meet my father in those days? Birds of a feather flock together, they say. Oh, it is horrible! Yet he seems to have always known decent people and to have visited nice houses. Oh, tell me he isn't what I think he is. I know that men are often gamblers and unscrupulous--I've heard about it often--and some women always cheat at bridge--but he isn't--he isn't----"

"Yes he is, Mabel; he is a thief!" cried the other bitterly. "I see you have found him out. At least, that is what he was when--when I met him."

"Oh--oh! I shall kill myself," sobbed the wretched girl. "I won't know him. I won't live with him. I won't ever touch him. He is vile, although he is my father. If I haven't courage enough to kill myself I--I shall kill him. I am quite alone--I've got nobody. It doesn't matter what I do or what becomes of me."

"Yes, you have some one, Mabel. You have me."

"Oh, you can't know me," cried the girl hysterically, drawing away. "I'm not fit to sit at your table. The Bishop, if he knew, would be horrified. Oh, how shabbily I am treating him by letting him imagine my father is a gentleman, and an equal! Oh, Lady Hester, Lady Hester, he has only come down here to steal. I know it. I overheard it."

"To steal--here!"

"Yes, and he's brought that man Voss with him."

"Voss? Who is Voss? The name seems familiar."

"He's his servant, or pretends to be. But he's quite familiar with him when they're alone, although father insults him all the time. They're planning something dreadful, I know they are. They want your emeralds."

"Oh, the emeralds are in a safe, dear," laughed Lady Hester mirthlessly. Again she drew the unhappy girl to her, and looked wonderingly into her eyes, ready to unburden her heart and make the great confession which must come sooner or later. The words would not shape themselves. Her emotions were too overpowering--she grew dizzy again. The cords of her brain seemed to be snapping. She opened her arms dumbly, and Mabel, seeing the pain in her face, came to her embrace tenderly and comforted her.

They stood thus for a few moments, the elder woman weeping quietly on the younger's shoulder, making but one shadow against the candle light. They forgot all else but their troubles.

They did not hear the door softly open behind them, but they heard it close. The next moment Jack's voice cried exultantly--

"Ah, I've got here, you see, little girl." He took a bound forward, and the women jumped apart.

"Jack!" gasped Mabel.

Her cry was echoed by Lady Hester.

"Jack?--here?"

"Good Lord--mother!" gasped Jack, falling back breathlessly and shamefaced. Then he cursed beneath his breath, while Lady Hester stood gazing at him in astonishment. Mabel hurried into a dressing gown, timid and ashamed.

Jack saw that he was caught. He ground his teeth and set his jaws obstinately; then rammed his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown, and stood awaiting the inevitable.

"Jack, you here at this time of night? What do you mean? Why have you come?"

Lady Hester looked from one to the other; but Mabel was only crying miserably, and playing with the lace of her dressing gown.

"We're caught, that's all," growled Jack defiantly. "Mabel, you might have told me you expected visitors, or have you arranged this as a surprise for me? Does mother know?"

"She knows no more than she has seen, Jack. I've told her nothing, and what she thinks I don't care. As I am never going to marry you, Jack, it doesn't matter what I do, or what Lady Hester knows."

Jack stared uncomprehendingly.

"She has discovered our secret," he muttered awkwardly.

"Secret--secret?" cried Lady Hester despairingly, flinging up her hands.

"We're married," he added.

"Oh, fools, fools! why couldn't you wait? You deceived me--both of you."

"Yes, we're married, that's the long and short of it," growled Jack, diving his hands deeper into his pockets, and striding up and down as though he were bored at this intrusion of Lady Hester into his domestic affairs.

"Married!" echoed Lady Hester. "Secretly?"

"Yes, married," he snapped. "Married. And what of it?" He jerked out his reply in a temper, and glared at his stepmother. "We've been married ever so long."

"Oh, Jack, Jack, you needn't have told her!" moaned Mabel, sinking into a chair.

"Needn't have told! I'm not going to have people thinking idiotic things about you and me. It's got to be kept quiet. But what does it matter now? Father has agreed to everything; so it hurts nobody."

"Fools! fools!" cried Lady Hester, flinging up her hands again, and making for the door. "Your secret is safe with me--but God help you!"

With a sob she escaped, leaving Jack more nettled than ever, and utterly mystified.

Still dumb, he stared at his wife with as much dignity as he could command in a dressing gown and slippers, angry and irritated; angry at being caught out by Lady Hester, irritated because he was vaguely conscious that there was mystery in progress, something outside his ken. He was temperamentally very like his father, and hated anything that was not plain sailing.

Mabel had dropped into a chair, where she sat huddled up with her hands clenched on her knees, the very picture of weary despair. He waited for her to speak now that Lady Hester had left them. It was only natural and proper that his wife should give him an explanation of the extraordinary interview which he had interrupted. But she remained silent, troubled, and self-engrossed. She was still overpowered and swayed by the emotions that stirred her when she talked to Lady Hester about her father; and her brain was benumbed; the present, with its hideous complications, filled her horizon. What mattered the future? All her bold resolves were rendered useless now Lady Hester knew of her marriage. Renunciation was of no avail. Jack naturally would demand an explanation, and she could give none--without telling all the hideous truth about her father and her own mysterious origin.

One fact alone stood out from the bewildering tangle. It was still impossible for them to face the world together as husband and wife.

It was awful to be the veriest plaything of circumstances. How could Jack hold up his head if he knew, he had a thief for a father-in-law, and that his own father's cherished heirlooms were at that moment in jeopardy? What would he think of her as the decoy and cat's-paw of a rascal who had used her to get into the Palace solely for the purpose of robbery?

Scalding tears forced themselves from under her burning eyelids, and as they fell upon her clenched hands she looked down at them, half expecting to see them blister the white flesh. Surely no girl had ever endured such torture as hers.

"Well, Mabel, perhaps you will explain why I find Lady Hester here, and why you allow me to get caught like this." Jack's voice was hard and cold.

"You should never have come--you should never have come!" she moaned, wringing her hands.

"And while we are on the explanation tack, perhaps you'll also give the reason for your extraordinary behavior in town, where you talked about good-bye forever, and all that sort of thing. Aunt Caroline caught us then, and now it's Lady Hester. What's the meaning of it?"

"Lady Hester took me by surprise. I couldn't send her away. I--I forgot you were coming for the moment.

"Forgot, eh?" exclaimed Jack loftily. "One would think we had been married six months."

"Jack, we ought not to have married at all. We ought not to have deceived Lady Hester."

"Look here, Mabel, is all this emotion and agitation due to what you overheard of Aunt Caroline's conversation in the Temple about Beatrice Carew? Why have you changed so utterly?"

"There is no change in me, Jack. The change is in other people. Oh--don't ask me--don't drive me crazy!" she exclaimed, starting up and clasping her throbbing temples.

The piteous trouble in her eyes moved him in spite of his anger. "Mabel, my darling, you're not yourself at all. You're not my sweet little wife who fished with me at Weybury, and planned out a rosy future, and----"

"No, I'm not, Jack--I'm not."

Further explanations were cut short by a step outside, and a knocking at the door. Lady Hester had returned. Jack opened the door, and she beckoned to him to come outside.

"Your father, Jack. He has heard that you're going up to town the first thing in the morning, and as he won't see you then, he wants to talk to you to-night and is going to your room. He may be there before you. Quick! You must not let him suspect anything."

With one troubled look at Mabel, Jack fled. Lady Hester, after watching him go, went in to comfort her daughter.

Her daughter!

She put her arms about her, lovingly and tenderly. There was no anger now, only a great pity; and she folded her to her heart, murmuring, "My poor child--my poor child! This comes of listening to a man in love."

She wept with her, alternately whispering words of comfort and words of gentle condemnation until she was compelled to hurry away in order to avoid inquiry from the Bishop.

Mabel locked herself in, and paced the room till the candles burned low in their sockets, groping blindly in the maze of doubt and difficulty, vainly seeking an outlet that promised some possibility of sane, rational conduct. She was hemmed in on every side. The cords of love were tugging at her heart. Matrimony chained her to Jack, and filial ties hedged her round. She was tethered hand and foot! There seemed to be only one way out--to die.

That was too wild and irrational to appeal to her level-headed instincts. Youth was hot within her; life was still precious; and she had always been accustomed to put her head on her pillow at night with a pleasant consciousness that the morning would dawn fair and bright with another day full of possibilities of joy and health. To contemplate self-extinction by violence was repugnant and horrible.

Jack, on his way to his room, hurried blindly along the dark corridor to the west wing, and, after going a few yards, bumped into some one coming in the opposite direction--a man.

It was Voss. But to Jack he was a stranger, or nearly so.

"Who the--dickens are you?"

"I'm Mr. Bannister's man, sir."

"What are you doing down here at this hour of the night?"

"Just getting some water for Mr. Bannister, sir. I couldn't find the bath room for the hot water, sir. Would you be so kind as to direct me?"

"There's a bath room in the other wing, three yards away from your master's room. Don't be an idiot. Look about you when the lights are up, and don't come prowling about the house like this."

"I'm very sorry, sir. I'd no idea I had wandered so far. I'm much obliged to you, sir. I'll find the other bath room."

Jack hurried on, for he heard the Bishop's door opening, and his father's voice telling Lady Hester not to wait up for him, as he might be a long time.

What the Bishop had to say to his son was not interesting. It bored Jack unutterably. It was a well-meant, paternal homily on marriage, and the duties of marriage, its responsibilities and ideals. It was almost a sermon. The old gentleman was careful to refrain from revealing anything he had learned through Aunt Caroline of the lady hidden in the Temple; but much of the Bishop's talk about chivalry and discretion and the fair name of her who was to be his wife was prompted by Aunt Caroline's revelations.

Jack, being a married man, and a worried one at that, naturally took little interest in a private sermon from his parent concerning the proper frame of mind in which to approach the altar. The Bishop sat on the end of his son's bed in a manner that was meant to be genial, fatherly, and confidential; and if Jack had opened his heart to his natural mentor, he might have sprung upon the old gentleman the great secret which was worrying him exceedingly. He had no idea that keeping up the sham of bachelorhood after the honeymoon was over would be such a strain.

The most interesting part of the discourse came at the end, when the Bishop announced that, in view of Mr. Bannister's generous settlement upon his daughter, he (the Bishop) could do no less than double Jack's present allowance, to prevent him being too much dependent on his wife.

The small hours were well advanced when the Bishop returned to his room. All the up-stairs lights were extinguished, and he groped his way as best he could, going softly for fear of disturbing his wife. He stopped outside her door for an instant and listened, because he fancied he heard a movement within. She was evidently not yet asleep, for the light showed through the keyhole of the door; or she might have fallen asleep and have left the candle burning. He was about to knock and turn the handle when a stifled sound, like a sob, disturbed the stillness--and the next instant the candle went out.

"I'd better not disturb her. Poor Hester! One of her nervous attacks; her fall must have shaken her badly."

He passed on, and, like Jack, tumbled on some one in the darkness. "Who is it?" he murmured.

"It is only me, sir, Mr. Bannister's man. I was going to get him some hot water. There's none in the other bath-room."

"Well, my man, go quietly. Another time light the gas at the end of the corridor before you try to find your way in a strange house."

"Yes, my lord--certainly, my lord. But I didn't care to take the liberty for fear I should disturb anybody."

A few minutes after the Bishop had begun to undress, he heard Voss turning on the tap in the bath-room, making a deal of unnecessary noise. He almost went out to rate him soundly for daring to run the risk of disturbing her ladyship by such carelessness; and he voted Mr. Bannister's man a stupid idiot.

Voss carried an empty can to his master's room, and let himself in. Bannister was not yet in bed. He was lounging at his ease on a couch reading--he was always late to bed. He looked up when Voss entered, showing irritation.

"Sorry," murmured Voss, "but I was obliged to come. I ran into the Bishop, and told him a yarn about hot water. Everybody seems to be prowling about the corridors to-night; first her ladyship, then Mr. Jack, and then the Bishop."

"Where have you been?" asked Bannister, as he closed his book and stretched his arms languidly with a yawn.

"Been prospecting."

"There's no need, you fool. I told you so."

"But we must know the ground."

"You'll do as I tell you. I say it is unnecessary."

"I've counted the windows from outside. It's the third from the end. The safe must be in the wall, and the wall quite a yard thick."

"You needn't concern yourself with useless calculations. It won't be done that way. There are other means of opening safes than those you would employ, my good Voss."

The fellow tidied up the bedroom in the mechanical way of a servant. He was a strange combination of servility, usefulness, and villainy.

"Emeralds ain't easy," he murmured thoughtfully as he folded a towel. "They ain't like diamonds, where one's just like another. Emeralds----"

"Silence!" hissed Bannister, blazing out at him with unusual energy. "Don't let me hear you mention the word within four walls. You're growing more and more careless. I'm here to arrange the marriage of my daughter to the Bishop's son; that is enough for the present. Have you talked to the other servants?"

"Yes, I've gassed about the way we live in town, and money no object, and all that sort of thing; and what a lucky boy Master Jack Lawyer is to marry an heiress."

"And what do they say?"

"That Aunt Caroline--that is, Miss Cardew--ain't taking to it at all kind; and nothing goes right in this house if she don't cotton to it. She means to make trouble, and talks as though the girl was only down here on appro', so to speak."

"I think I've put a check upon Aunt Caroline." Bannister smiled and stroked his beard, and dropped his eye-glass, and surveyed himself pleasantly in the mirror.

"Do I look old, Voss?"

"Old--what do you mean?"

"Do you think I've changed much in twenty years?"

"No, not since I've known you."

"Ah, I wear very well. Do you think I've improved?" He ran his fingers lovingly through his hair.

"Matter of taste," observed Voss, who rather wondered at the strange question. He knew from old association that it was always necessary to wait till his master arrived at the point, and not to forestall him.

"Do you think Lady Hester has changed?"

"How should I know?"

"You never saw her before?"

"No."

"Quite sure?"

"I seemed to fancy her sort of familiar. But them sort of people get their photographs in the papers, and when you meet 'em they're like old friends. But I reckon you've met her before." This with a grin.

"Oh! How do you arrive at that?"

"I see her fall down-stairs. Lor', it gave me a turn! I thought you was spotted at the beginning; but no doubt it's all right. Old flame, I suppose?"

"Yes, we were rather--friendly once, years ago, at about the time when I first took you in hand, Voss."

"She was a kid then, surely."

"No, not exactly. She looks young, doesn't she?"

"Yes, for an old codger like the Bishop."

"Ah, you think somebody younger would appeal to her. She and I look more suited to one another than the present arrangement, eh?"

"Oh, I see your game," grinned Voss. "Going the soft way as usual. No, no, it won't work. She ain't that sort."

"That is a matter beyond your powers of discernment, Voss. I thought it best to warn you, so that you may make yourself useful--and scarce, sometimes--and keep that watchful eye of yours upon corridors and staircases, and garden paths. You understand?"

Voss frowned his disapproval. He showed his preoccupation by folding and re-folding a towel that was in his hand, until Bannister fidgeted uneasily.

"You will notice that I don't ask your advice on the matter, Voss. I merely give you an indication of what to expect."

"Just so," sighed Voss, with monumental weariness intended to signify disapproval.

"Now you can bring that chair and brush my hair quietly for five minutes--with the medium brushes. I've got a headache; and I shan't sleep to-night unless my nerves are mechanically soothed. And don't hum and whistle while you're doing it. It annoys me."

Voss unpacked the brushes, and cast an eye at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was one-thirty. Then he began his task, and looked, as he brushed, at his master's reflection in the mirror. He saw an unusual brilliancy of eye, a slight pink flush--very rare--upon each cheek, and supercilious lips muttering nervously as if in imaginary conversation. These were the only signs of excitement that he ever detected in his master, and they appeared on very special occasions only.

He gave the solution as "Emeralds."

He was wrong. It was a woman, whose aching head was tossing on a pillow not far away. Bannister was thinking of her, and remembering how she looked years ago, when the pillow was smoothed by his own white hand.