because he wins, but—” She stopped short without finishing the sentence, as if suddenly recollecting my presence, and annoyed that she should have involuntarily uttered these words.

“Tell me, Mabel, who he is,” I inquired. “I have met him before, and to me he is a mystery.”

“To me also he is a mystery,” she said, with knit brows. “If he is your friend, take my advice and end your friendship speedily.”

“But is he not your friend?” I asked.

“I knew him—once,” she answered in a low voice; adding quickly: “If I remain here I shall faint. Do take me to my carriage at once.”

She rose unsteadily, bade good-night to her sister and Jack, then taking my arm accompanied me downstairs to the great hall.

It was an entirely new phase of the mystery that the Countess of Fyneshade should be acquainted with my strange, sinister-faced conductor. That she feared him was evident, for while there had been an unmistakable look of taunting triumph in his face, she had flinched beneath his gaze and nearly fainted. Her declaration that she had recognised no man at that moment, her strenuous efforts to remain calm, and her subsequent admission that he was her enemy, all pointed to the fact that she was well acquainted with him; and although, as we stood while her carriage was being found, I asked her fully a dozen times to disclose his name or something about him, she steadily refused. It was a secret that she seemed determined to preserve at all hazards.

When she grasped my hand in farewell she whispered, “Regard what I have told you as a secret between friends. I have been foolish, but I will try to make amends. Adieu!” Then she stepped into her carriage, and I went up into the drawing-room in search of the mysterious dark-visaged guest, whose appearance had produced such a sudden, almost electric effect upon her. Through several rooms, the great conservatory, and the corridors I searched, but could neither discover my strange companion on that eventful night, nor the pale-faced girl in pink. For fully half an hour I wandered about, my eager eyes on the alert, but apparently they had both disappeared on being recognised.

Did this strange individual fear to meet me face to face?

Though my mind was filled with memories of that fateful night when I had been joined in matrimony to my divinity, I nevertheless chatted with several women I knew, and at last 

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