34

"I am sorry to say," she replied lightly, "that our friend is a fool now," looking up at him with a glance strangely deep and subtle, "if he were half the man you are——"

"I have nothing further to say," Guy interrupted, flushing with indignation and disgust, and without another word he abruptly left her.

Two days later all Baden was shocked by the startling news that young Nelson Leonard had accidentally shot himself and was lying at the point of death.

Those melancholy hours of watching by Leonard's bedside, in that dreary hotel room, lived in Guy's memory. When the doctor's sad verdict was pronounced, the dying man pleaded to be left alone with his friend.

"Ah, dear old fellow," he said gently, when they were alone, "pretty well done—for an accident? Forgive me," he murmured, as he caught a sharp look of pain in Guy's face. "Forgive——" his voice faltered, and his head fell wearily back on the pillow.

Then the poor boy's mind wandered, and Lillian Stuart's name was constantly on his lips. In broken, halting sentences a pitiful story of deception and disappointment was revealed to Guy—a story which would be sacred to him to his life's end, and, as he listened, his whole soul revolted against the woman who had so willfully trifled with this man's tender, loyal heart. Before morning dawned, Nelson Leonard's 35 eyes had closed forever on a life which he had found too difficult for him. When the sad affair was over, Guy would fain have left Baden at once, but he was obliged to await there the arrival of Leonard's family from America.

35

In the days that ensued Lillian Stuart was markedly subdued, but if she had any suspicion of the real truth concerning Leonard's death she never betrayed it by word or look. She did all in her power to overcome Guy's aversion for her, but he sternly repulsed her. To attempt conciliation was a new rôle for Miss Stuart, and his cold disregard of all her efforts was the severest wound her vanity had ever received.

Such a slight is not readily forgiven or forgotten by a woman of her type. So when Guy Appleton once more crossed her path, and she found, in his deep love for Helen, his vulnerable point, she felt that her day of triumph had come.

It had been an easy task to secure Helen's friendship, and then to so use her influence with the girl as to effect 

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