between you and her now? You will not remember her cruelties, you will only think of her sufferings? Oh, Philip, you must take up this matter for her, and you must plead for her, when the time comes, as you have never done before. You will, Philip, promise me you will?"

"There is little need for that," he answered, sadly; "all my services are at her disposal if she will accept them."

"Yes, I am sure of it," replied Esther. "Ah, Philip, I did not think this would be the service she was to require from you, when I begged you, that last day at the Folly, to help her if occasion came."

"No, nor did I," answered Philip, quietly; then after a moment's pause he continued: "Do you think, Esther, you can bear to tell me a little more about this matter? So far I know nothing beyond the bald fact of the arrest, and the nature of the charge lodged. Miss Darling was too much overcome to enter into particulars. If I put a few plain questions, will you answer them?"

"Oh, yes, I will try," replied Mrs. Newbold, clasping her hands closely together, and looking earnestly up at him.

Philip drew forward a low chair, and placing it in front of her, sat down wearily, and with a half sigh.

"Do you know when—she—she was arrested?" He avoided Patricia's name with something of the same dread which makes us hesitate over that of one but lately dead.

"I think it was only a few days ago, but I don't know exactly; I cannot give you the precise date," answered Esther.

"Ah, that accounts for the delay that has occurred in their pushing on the matter," said Philip, more to himself than to her. "August is the legal holiday month, and Anstice, the District Judge, before whom the examination, if there be one, would be made, is not due here for another week. We have therefore seven clear days before us, in any event, without counting on the chapter of accidents for further delays. Now tell me, who was it brought the application for arrest?"

"Count Vladimir Mellikoff," replied Mrs. Newbold. "Oh, Philip," she added, her eyes flashing, "is he not a coward, and does not his seem coward's work, when one remembers how he was received and trusted?"

Mr. Tremain answered by a gesture of his hand.

"One would rather not think of that," he said; "let us try and put aside personalities, and look at the case only from an outside point of view. You may be very sure Count Mellikoff wasted neither time, nor the opportunities afforded him by your hospitality, to work out his nefarious scheme. But what I wish to ask you, Esther, will, I know, grieve you to answer; still I must clear up one or two points in my own mind, before I see her. Who was the person murdered; and why is she suspected of complicity in the crime?"

He spoke sternly, and the hard lines of his face appeared in greater prominence. Esther looked at him half frightened.

"He believes her guilty," she thought, with quick and decisive perception. "How terrible! But it is so, I see it in his face." Then she said aloud, and with a slowness that was almost hesitancy: "The name of the murdered man was Count Stevan Lallovich; but I can't tell you—that is—at least I don't know, how it is that they prove Patricia to be mixed up in the horrible affair."

Mr. Tremain noted her hesitancy and the sudden reserve that had come over her; he put it down to the knowledge of some facts she was wilfully withholding from him, and this suspicion added weight in the scale, that balanced so evenly between Patricia's innocence and guilt.

When he next spoke, his voice was even colder and harder than before.

"There is something very mysterious in the whole affair," he said, looking Esther straight in the eyes; "it seems inconceivable that an American citizen should be arrested in her own country, on the charge of a foreign agent, for a murder committed in a foreign land, on a foreign subject. Of course Count Mellikoff has no power to arrest of himself; he must therefore, have laid sufficiently compromising evidence before our authorities to obtain a warrant, and an officer to execute it. As it appears now the whole affair reads more like a midsummer madness than anything else; but a madness pregnant with serious complications and results. Who was this Stevan Lallovich, Esther, and did—she—know him?"

"He was a cousin, or a relation, or a near connection of the Russian Tsar's," answered Mrs. Newbold, still avoiding Philip's eyes. "I heard Patricia—I mean I believe she did once admit knowing him when she was in St. Petersburg. He was a great swell there, I am told, and the favourite of the Court society. I don't know anything more about it, Philip, indeed I don't. And oh, it is all so horrible, and so dreadful, how can you go on asking questions in that cold way? It's just as if you admitted to yourself that there was a possibility of her—her knowing something about the death of this miserable man. Oh, Philip, how can you doubt her? How can you, when you think of her in prison, and remember it is Patricia, our own Patricia, they accuse of this terrible crime?"

And Esther buried her face in her hands weeping passionately.

But Mr. Tremain was scarcely moved; he remained sitting, resting his head on his hand, and apparently lost in close study of the carpet under his feet. Esther's words rang in his ears.

"Oh, Philip, how can you doubt her?"

And yet he knew he did doubt her. He knew that when Mrs. Newbold admitted Patricia's acquaintance with the murdered Stevan Lallovich, and placed that acquaintance within the ten years of Miss Hildreth's absence—those ten unexplained years—he felt all the old distrust and suspicion leap into life again, and range themselves before him in mute confirmation of Miss James's calculated insinuations.

"Ten years is a long time—long enough to plant and sow and reap—long enough to sink one's self to the neck in intrigue, to bury one's self in crime."

How could he declare her innocent when this terrible, impassable gulf lay between them? Since she had known this Stevan Lallovich, might not another of Miss James's suppositions prove true? Might she not also have known Vladimir Mellikoff in that past, and have reason to fear him now? How much could he believe even of what she, Patricia, might tell him?

Several long moments passed by in silence, during which Esther sobbed hysterically, before he roused himself, and, getting up, said, very quietly: "I will not trouble you further to-night, Esther; you had better get to bed, little woman. You do not quite trust me, I know, but you may, my dear; never fear, she shall not suffer or be overcome if I can prevent it. I will come back to-morrow after—I have seen her—and tell you of her."

"Oh, Philip, be gentle to her," pleaded Esther, "be very gentle; remember you did love her—once."

"I am not likely to forget it," he replied, and then he turned away abruptly and left her.

All night long he walked to and fro, up and down, across an open common of waste land that skirted the railway at Manhattanville, and all night long, as the hours crept by, and the stars faded, and the dawn drew on, he fought the battle over and over against himself—the battle of his love for her, against his doubt of her. And when the day broke in a sunrise of golden splendour, it found him still uncertain, neither victor nor vanquished; still loving her, and still doubting her.

CHAPTER II.

LUDLOW STREET JAIL.

Mr. Tremain did not return to his rooms with the dawning of the day; he indeed shunned them with an almost superstitious dread of what he should find there. It seemed to his overwrought nerves that they must for ever be haunted by the horrible spectres evolved by Miss Dick, and by the memory of her terror-stricken eyes and tear-stained face.

With the lengthening of the morning hours civilisation awoke again to its monotonous round of employment. A grey-coated policeman, making his way to