She has been his constant friend and companion ever since his wife died, six years ago. I'm awfully sorry for both poor Beryl and Wynd."

I was about to reply, but his words froze upon my lips, for at that instant there rang through the house a shrill scream--the agonised scream of a woman.

"Listen!" I cried. "What's that?"

But my companion's jaw had dropped, and he sat immovable, listening intently.

Again the scream rang out, but seemed stifled and weaker.

The Tempter was with his daughter whom he had determined should die. The thought decided me, and turning, without further word, I dashed from the room, and with quickly-beating heart ran up the wide thickly-carpeted staircase.

CHAPTER FOUR. THE NOTE OF INTERROGATION.

On reaching the corridor I was confronted by the thin, spare figure of the Tempter standing resolutely before a closed door--that of Beryl's chamber.

His black eyes seemed to flash upon me defiantly, and his face had reassumed that expression which was sufficient index to the unscrupulousness of his character.

"Let me pass!" I cried roughly, in my headlong haste. "I desire to see my wife."

"You shall not enter?" he answered, in a voice tremulous with an excitement which he strove in vain to control.

"She is in distress. I heard her scream. It is my duty, both as a doctor and as her husband, to be at her side."

"Duty?" he sneered. "My dear sir, what is duty to a man who will sell himself for a handful of banknotes?"

"I yielded to your accursed temptation, it is true!" I cried fiercely. "But human feeling is not entirely dead in my heart, as it is in yours. Thank God that my hands are still unsullied!"

He laughed--the same harsh, discordant laugh that had escaped him when, below in the library, I had refused to accept the vile condition of the compact.

He stood there barring my passage to that room wherein lay the unknown woman who had been so strangely united to me. Whoever she was, I was resolved to rescue her. Mystery surrounded her--mystery that I resolved at all hazards to penetrate.

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