his broken conversation gave. After his departure, she sat weeping, until it struck her sensible nature how very foolish she was to waste time in idle regrets. Whether Cyril felt so mortally offended by her doubts as to regard the engagement at an end, she could not say. But after some thought she believed that her remarks had given him a clue which he had left thus abruptly to follow up. Sooner or later he would return to explain, and then all would be well between them.

And in spite of his odd behaviour, she had one great consolation in knowing that he was innocent. His denial of guilt had been so strong; the alibi he set forth was so easy of proof, and so impossible of invention, that she blamed herself sincerely for ever having doubted the young man. Nevertheless, considering the weird circumstances, and the fact of the likeness of the double—whomsoever he might be—to her lover, she could scarcely regard herself as having been foolish. Nine people out of ten would have made the same mistake, and would have harboured similar doubts. Certainly, seeing that she loved Cyril devotedly, she should have been the tenth; but in the hour of trial her faith had proved very weak. She tried to remind herself that she had never really believed him to be guilty. All the same, recalling the late conversation, she had to recognise that her words could have left very little doubt in Lister's mind as to the fact that she believed him to be a robber and an assassin. Well, if she had, surely she had been severely punished, as was only fair.

Mrs. Coppersley returned from the funeral in a very chastened frame of mind, and in the company of Henry Vand, whom she had bidden to tea. The table was furnished forth with funeral baked meats, after the fashion of Hamlet's mother's wedding, and Mr. Vand did full justice to them—wonderful justice, considering his apparently delicate constitution. He was not very tall, and remarkably handsome, with his young, clean-shaven face, his large, blue eyes, and his curly, golden hair. His body was well-shaped all save the right foot, which was twisted and the leg of which was shorter than the other. Like Talleyrand and Lord Byron, the young man was club-footed, but otherwise had a very attractive personality. From his delicate fingers, it could be seen that he was a musician, and he had an air of refinement astonishing in one of his breeding and birth. Bella did not like him much. Not that she had any fault to find with him; but his eyes were shallow, like those of a bird, and his conversation was dull, to say the least of it. The sole way in which he could converse was through his violin, and as he had not that with him on this occasion, Bella 

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