you if you will save yourself."

She was not slow to read his meaning beneath his words, and the smile that curved her lips was bitter enough as she exclaimed:

"So you doubt me, Philip—you!" Then, with a quick indrawn breath: "Ask any questions you like, I will answer them."

"You know by whom your arrest has been accomplished?" he said quickly, avoiding any definite answer to her reproach.

"Yes, by Count Vladimir Mellikoff."

"And the charge?"

"For being an accomplice in the murder of Count Stevan Lallovich," she answered quietly.

"Did you ever know this Count Stevan Lallovich?"

"Yes."

"Did you know of his murder?"

"Yes."

"Do you know the circumstances connected with it?"

"Yes."

"Will you tell them to me?"

"I had rather not do so—now."

"Very well, let that pass. Did you ever know Count Mellikoff previous to meeting him at the Folly?"

"No, I think not. One meets so many people in the course of one's life; but I am quite sure I had never met Count Mellikoff before."

"Do you know of any reason he might have for enmity against you?"

"No, indeed; none whatever."

"It is very extraordinary," Mr. Tremain continued after this brief colloquy. "I cannot but think there is some other person mixed up in this affair besides Count Mellikoff, some one who has perhaps personal motives to serve in bringing this charge against you. Can you think of any one who has sufficient cause against you to make such a course possible? Any woman, let us say, to whom the blackening of your character would give a vindictive satisfaction?"

"Ah," she replied, with a scornful gesture, and the superiority of a beautiful woman over her plainer sisters, "I cannot follow you there. We all have our feminine enemies without doubt; but who of us can put our finger on the most venomous of them?"

"All the same we must find this one, Patricia; when we find her we shall perhaps unearth the secret of her spleen. I am convinced Count Mellikoff has a woman for his ally."

Miss Hildreth shrugged her shoulders, but made no further reply. Presently, however, she turned a little more towards him, leaning still further across the table, and looking full into his eyes, said, with sudden directness:

"Why do you ask nothing concerning your friend, Adèle Lamien, Philip? Do you not know that she, too, is implicated in this affair?"

"Adèle Lamien!" he exclaimed, taken off his guard by the unexpectedness of the assault. "Good Heavens! what has she to do with all this?"

"Ah, what indeed?" answered Miss Hildreth, slowly. "Fathom her motives, Philip, and you will lay bare the secret of my arrest."

"Patricia," he cried again, strangely moved and excited by her words and manner, and by the sudden return of that vague, intangible influence, evoked by the mere mention of Mdlle. Lamien's name, that had from the first played so distinct a part in his intimacy with her, "Patricia, what do you mean? Explain yourself. What can Adèle Lamien have to do with you?"

"Ah, what indeed?" she answered, in the same measured tones, still looking at him earnestly. "What indeed? All—or nothing,—Philip. Simply that."

"I must know more," he exclaimed, almost roughly. "You must tell me what you mean. I must find her."

"That may prove more difficult than you imagine," answered Miss Hildreth, quietly, and as she said the words, Woods the warder entered, and Philip understood the end of his interview had come.

He got up mechanically and held out his hand. "It is best I should go for a little while," he said. "I will come back again. After all, we have settled very little."

"I should say we had settled a great deal," she answered, with another of those quick, mocking smiles.

Then she bade him good-bye; and it was not until he had walked up the longer half of Broadway, that Mr. Tremain remembered two things. Patricia had calmly ignored his outstretched hand, and he had forgotten to inquire of the superintendent the nature of Mdlle. Lamien's complicity in the charge brought against Miss Hildreth.

CHAPTER IV.

MIXED MOTIVES.

Mr. Tremain had not been far wrong when he told Esther Newbold that the arrest of so prominent and well-known a person as Miss Hildreth bid fair to develop into an international question.

The charge entered against her was of too grave a nature not to excite and sustain public attention. It certainly appeared to the community at large a very arbitrary and high-handed proceeding that an American citizen could be thus imprisoned at the request of a foreign Government.

Her offence being in no respect a political one, this loophole of escape could not be urged in her favour, for in that case the foreign Government interested in her committal would never have demanded her arrest or expected her surrender into their hands. Doubtless had Miss Hildreth been but a poor workwoman, on whom depended the support of her family, no such strenuous efforts would have been put forth to accomplish her arrest, or a precedence have been created to deal with her position.

But being what she was, and controlling almost unlimited wealth and influence, the case assumed potential proportions, and therefore it was deemed expedient to allow an official inquiry to take place, and to permit the greatest latitude in its operations, even to the calling of witnesses.

To meet this position of affairs great exertions were made on the part of Miss Hildreth's friends, foremost among whom stood Philip Tremain. He had quitted Patricia's presence, at the conclusion of that first interview, as undecided in his own mind as to her guilt or innocence as he had been when he heard of her arrest. Her words, her insinuations, her reticence, had all been so many damning factors against her, while her manner, so light-hearted, so inconsequent, so trivial, were the only elements in her favour.

To Philip, indeed, that very light-heartedness—which he called flippancy—appeared the most suspicious feature of her behaviour. It seemed to him that any woman, no matter how frivolous or hardened, must have given vent to tears and protestations when brought so close to the awful consequences of even supposed guilt; whereas, he found Miss Hildreth even more composed—if that were possible—and more trivial than at their parting in the flies on George Newbold's birthday night.

Good heavens, how long ago that seemed! And what a page of tragedy—or was it melodrama? he had construed since then!

As he walked back to his rooms from Ludlow Street Jail that hot August evening, his mind was very full of Patricia's farewell words:

"Fathom Adèle Lamien's motives, Philip, and you will lay bare the secret of my arrest."

He had, indeed, in the sudden tumult and agitation of Dick Darling's appearance and communication, lost sight of Mdlle. Lamien's claims upon him; nor was it until Patricia spoke with that enigmatical smile that he remembered them, or paused to consider what was likely to be her attitude in the present complication of affairs.

He had neither heard from or of Mdlle. Lamien since their parting, and while he held himself bound to her by honour, he could not help reflecting upon the fact that no actual engagement existed between them, and that she might so regard their equivocal position, and desire him to understand her silence as an expression of her final refusal of his suit. However that might be, he felt matters had reached such a crisis as to make his seeing her an imperative duty, since, by so doing, he might elucidate the true motive for Patricia's arrest. Recalling Adèle Lamien's last words, and the note of victory in her voice—"surely this should be triumph enough, even for me, to know that I have won you from the remembrance, nay, from the very presence of Patricia Hildreth"—he felt more than ever convinced that Vladimir Mellikoff had not only been helped