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angel to them. There's only one comfort-in doing me, they've done themselves too. I don't think they'll be quite so proud of their cleverness as they are now. I must tell you what has happened before I tell you what will have to be. In my own name, as usual, but at their infernal risk, I bought ten thousand of Kamschatkans at forty, for the account; you know what I mean-if they went down as much as I knew how to make them, there would have been a thousand at least in my pocket to-morrow morning, and twice as much for them. By some amazing trickery that's been puzzling me all the week, Kamschatkans have been flying up, and up, and upnothing I could do would make them go down. Instead of receiving a thousand to-morrow, I shall have to pay five thousand-it sounds wild and incredible, but it's true; and to whom? I've found that out-to Aristides and Sinon. Do you see? I buy for them—from them. They keeping it dark from me-sell me their worthless shares, pretending that they are to back me in return for my running the shares down; then, behind my back, by some Greek devil's trick, they run them up; and then they come forward as the sellers and leave me in the plight of the buyer-why, we were asked to their robbers' den to-night only to keep us blind."

"Well," said Helen, determined to let him feel that he had put himself beneath even her slightest scorn, "" I suppose it will not ruin you to pay five thousand pounds instead of receiving one; though of course I quite understand how much more important a money loss must be than any other." She did not quite succeed in her endeavour to be scornful beyond the reach of open scorn; but Gideon Skull was less sensitive to shades of tone than Walter Gray, and he noticed nothing but the strict letter of her words. Had he not satisfied her—nay, had he not satisfied himself that she had grievously misjudged him?

"The thieves had got it somehow into their heads that I was a rich man-and they knew I betted on stock; and the two things put together come to the sheep made for fleecing which they thought me. They used me and paid me as long as they found me useful; and then, when there is no further use to be made of their goose, they kill him. Asses themselves—as if I'd have worked with such knaves if I had had five thousand sixpences of my own, let alone five thousand pounds-they've sheared the pig that the devil sheared; that's all. . . . Helen!"

"Well ?"

"What with Yankee cads like Waldron, and Greek pickpockets like Sinon and Aristides, there is no place in London for a commonly

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honest man. I don't pretend to be better than my neighbours, but-we must begin things over again. I've begun often enough to know the way pretty well by this time. Everybody must lose a game now and then before he wins. We won't stay in this house another day, nor in this country; there are plenty of others. Get all the packing done overnight, if you can. Do it thoroughly; don't let the thieves get hold of so much as a pennyworth that you can carry away. And then, whom have I but you in the world, and whom have you but me? You have no brother to put first now— and your mother is gone-and I don't count my Uncle Christopher. Let us truly begin again. Try, Helen, for your own sake, to see me as I am to you——————”

when they

"I see you perfectly," said Helen, her determined calm beginning-but only slightly as yet to give way. "I don't understand, quite, the beginning of your story; but I see, in the end, that you have induced Mr. Aristides and Mr. Sinon to employ you as their jackal and false newsmonger, in the belief that they, required it, might make you pay for the place smartly. I see that they thought they had cheated you, and that you thought you had cheated them, and that both sides have got what they deserved. I see you have been living on the credit which they gave you under the false belief that it was not required. And now I see that you are going to run away from your tradesmen with all the property of Mr. Aristides on which you can lay your hands. I would have returned Madame Aristides her own pearls to-night, if I had known. And I see that you dare-that you are so kind as to ask me to share your flight, and to-oh, I cannot think of your last offer-it sickens me. Do you know-or have you forgotten-that I married you because you said you had ten thousand a year? Do you suppose I should have married you if you- Was that a lie, too?"

It was not exactly anger which reddened the forehead of Gideon, and made his voice at the same time both louder and deeper. One cannot call by the name of anger the just indignation of a man who hears himself unjustly accused, and the passionately real desire of his heart treated with scorn.

"It is unbearable, Helen !" he began, pacing backwards and forwards across the room. "I am not answerable for the ways of business-they are not my making. It is not my fault that people have insisted on believing me a rich man ; and I never told you, or any human being, that I had so much as a shilling a year. No, not once. On the contrary, I have always let people understand that I was actually poor, whatever I might be going to be. When I married

you, the chances were ten thousand at least to one that, in a week or two at furthest, I should have ten thousand a year-probably more, but so much beyond question. Ten thousand chances to one is a practical certainty. It isn't more than ten thousand chances to one that the sun will rise to-morrow. When one talks of a certainty or

a fact, one always takes for granted a contrary chance or two. And what is a week or two? Practically, I had ten thousand a year—then. It was as true as anything on earth can ever be. I didn't know then as much of Aristides and Sinon as I do now.

I knew they

Why, when

were Greeks, but I didn't know they were brigands. you tell me your brother is dead, you imply a chance, though it may be but one in a hundred thousand, that he is still—”

All of a sudden he paused abruptly. What is one chance in a hundred thousand? Practically, as he would put it, Alan Reid was dead; and he was the husband of the sole heiress of Copleston. His heart must indeed have been absorbed in deeper things for his head to have taken ten minutes, slow as it was by nature in shifting its grooves, not to have leaped to that fact as soon as he had assurance of the death of Alan Reid. His knowledge of the will no longer merely put him in the position of being able to sell his secret to the rightful heir so soon as he might turn up in Arizona or elsewhere. Why, with that will in his hand, he could take just vengeance on Victor Waldron, snap his fingers in the face of Aristides and Sinon, and build his fortune, no longer on the quicksands of speculation, but on the solid rock which underlies the earth of English counties.

"Fortunate" seemed too commonplace a word to give to the combination of chances which had enabled him to put off considering what he should do with his knowledge of his uncle's secret until Alan's death made it impossible to entertain the least question of what he should do. He paced the room more and more quickly, till he became nearly as unconscious of his wife's presence as if his need of wealth were really greater and stronger than his hunger for what wealth could not buy. There was surely nothing over-sanguine here. No more than the commonest common-sense was needed to make the chances in his favour a million to one; and who need mention one chance against a million? It was good enough on the part of his brother-in-law to die at all, but it was admirable in him to die in such a manner that the news of his death had been kept back till now. He had excused his heart to his head on the ground that he had married Helen solely for Copleston's sake, and he now found himself more than justified. Why, if he could not gain what he

wanted most, he could no longer call himself a fool for having married the heiress of Copleston

“Have you done with me?" asked Helen. "Have you anything more to say?"

"What? Oh, yes, I remember. Don't pack up to-night. I have been thinking, and I have changed my plans. . . . Yes; you are right in some things, though you are wrong in the main. Why can't you take me as I am. Helen, and make the best of me? If you hated me—what do you think it means to me to feel that you married me only for what you thought you could get by it, and to feel your touch grow colder and colder? But I am not at the end yet of what I can do for you. If I were to get back Copleston”

"If you were to get back Copleston! What is Copleston to me? It was Alan's-not mine. I would not take it as a gift—least of all from you. I hope you understand that I am your wife no more, and shall henceforth lead my own life in my own way.”

"Helen, have I not explained"

But she had left the room.

Gideon drew a deep sigh. A short time ago he would have given all that somebody else was worth in the world for news of the death of Alan Reid. Now he had got the news for nothing. He meant to take the fullest advantage of his unquestionable rights; but, though he found Law, Justice, Interest, and Conscience for once fully united on his side, and though a near view of Copleston, with its future income and mesne profits, reduced to insignificance his debt to Messrs. Aristides and Sinon, he was disappointed to find in himself none of the elation which should accompany so swift and sudden a turn of Fortune's wheel. He knew in his soul that he would have sold all Copleston-with glad shame for his folly-for some touch of his wife's finger in which he might feel that he was more to her than a ladder which had broken down. condition of a merchant lost in the desert, who for one drop of water would give his whole caravan.

He was in the

It was as if his brain were feeling and his heart thinking. No human being could have told which of the two it was that was trying to find its way into the safe in the bank where old Harry's will was sleeping and waiting to be called, or which of the two made him stoop down and pick up a white glove that Helen had dropped, and put it to his lips before throwing it upon his writing-table, as if it were nothing but a stray envelope. He lighted another cigar. "She

might at least throw me as much as one does to a dog," thought he. "It's not my fault if I've made a few blunders-any other man would have made a hundred where I've made one. Well, I suppose it's human nature for a woman to be cut up when she finds she hasn't married ten thousand a year. I can't blunder in this, though. Perhaps when she finds I've got back Copleston for her, after all, and revenged her on that swindling Yankee scoundrel-I wish women weren't made so that one is bound to buy them if one happens to be ass enough to want them-perhaps she may throw me a bone in the shape of a thank-you. Anyhow, it will be better to live like cat and dog at Copleston, with enough to do it on, than like dog and cat without enough to keep a puppy or a kitten. I wonder if I only fancy that I want her, and whether all that I really want of her isn't just to wring her neck and have done with her. If I could only be sure that I hated her, it would be a weight off one's mind. It isn't much like me to be troubling myself about a woman, and a woman whose best word for one is 'liar' and 'jackal.' The devil take her ! And yet I believe I'd have my head cut off, long ears and all, if that would make her care. . . . No, I won't write a single word to those brigands. They may make whatever row in the City they please—not that they will please. I mustn't rob them of the pleasure of their feelings when they find they've been in a conspiracy to rob a man of straw on whom they dare not lay a finger. Well, I must get some sort of rest, I suppose, and I shan't get much to-night if I go upstairs. . . . I'm just sick of thinking. Sleep wouldn't be enough just now. Yes I'll go in for a dose of dying, it saves the bother of dreams."

He locked the door, and turned the gas very low. Then, taking off boots and arranging his clothes loosely and comfortably, he lay down on a sofa, on his back, with his legs stretched out and his arms straight by his sides. He closed his eyes, dropped his head backwards over the single flat cushion that he had taken for a pillow, and let his mouth fall open. He drew one deep breath, and, at the end of a minute, fell into a condition that might have been taken for death indeed. Every sign of colour left his face; his chest did not rise or fall; he did not seem to breathe so much as a sleeping child, or even at all. It was a strangely corpse-like condition, less like sleep than trance; if he wished to escape from everything for a time, even from dreams, he could have taken no likelier way.

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