Slowly, slowly, passed that hour of waiting. The clock struck eight.

"She'll be here every minute now," said old Katie, with a sigh of relief.

But minute after minute passed and Claudia did not come. A half an hour slipped away. Old Katie in her impatience got up and walked about the room. She heard the rustle of silken drapery, and peeped out. It was only Mrs. Dugald, in her rich white brocade dress, passing into her own apartments.

"Nasty, wenemous, pison sarpint! I'll fix you out yet!" muttered old Katie between her teeth, with a perfectly diabolical expression of countenance, as she shook her head at the vanishing figure of the beauty; for that was the unlucky way in which poor Katie's black phiz expressed righteous indignation.

"I do wonder what has become of my ladyship. This is a-keeping of her word like a ladyship oughter, aint it now? I go and look for her," said Katie.

But just as she had opened the door for that purpose her eyes fell upon the figure of the viscount, creeping with stealthy, silent, cat-like steps towards the apartments of Mrs. Dugald, in which he disappeared.

"Ah ha! dat's somefin' else. Somefin' goin' on in dere. Well, if I don't ax myself to dat party, my name's not old Aunt Katie Mortimer, dat's all!" said the old woman in glee, as she cautiously stole from the room and approached the door leading into Mrs. Dugald's apartments.

When at the door, which was ajar, she peeped in. The suite was arranged upon the same plan as Lady Vincent's own. As Katie peered in, she saw through the vista of three rooms into the dressing room, which was the last of the suite. Before the dressing-room fire she saw the viscount and Mrs. Dugald standing, their faces towards the fire; their backs towards Katie.

She cautiously opened the door and stepped in, closing it silently behind her. Then she crept through the intervening rooms and reached the door of the dressing room, which was draped around with heavy velvet hangings, and she concealed herself in their folds, where she could see and hear everything that passed.

"How long is this to go on? Do you know that the presence of my rival maddens me every hour of the day? Are you not afraid--you would be, if you knew me!--that I should do some desperate deed? I tell you that I am afraid of myself! I cannot always restrain my impulses, Malcolm. There are moments when I doubt whether you are not playing me false. And at such times I am in danger of doing some desperate deed that will make England ring with the hearing of it,"

said Mrs. Dugald, with passionate earnestness.

"Faustina, you know that I adore you. Be patient a few days longer-- a very few days. The time is nearly ripe. I have at last found the instrument of which I have been so much in need. This man, Frisbie.

He is completely in my power, and will be a ready tool. I will tell you the whole scheme. But stop! first I must secure this interview from interruption. Not a word of this communication must be overheard by any chance listener," said Lord Vincent.

And to poor old Katie's consternation he passed swiftly to the outer door of the suite of rooms, locked it and put the key in his pocket and returned to the dressing room, the door of which remained open.

"Dere! if I aint cotch like an old rat in a trap, you may take my hat! Don't care! I gwine hear all dey got to say. An' if dey find me dey can't hang me for it, dat's one good thing! And maybe dey won't find me, if I keep still till my lordship--perty lordship he is-- unlocks de door and goes out, and den I slip out myself, just as I slipped in, and nobody none de wiser. Only if I don't sneeze. I feel dreadful like sneezing. Nobody ever had such an unlucky nose as I have got. Laws, laws, if I was to sneeze!" thought old Katie to herself as she lurked behind the draperies.

But soon every sense was absorbed in listening to the villainous plot that Lord Vincent was unfolding to his companion. It was the very same plot that he had communicated to his valet, the atrocity of which had shocked even that cut-throat. It did not shock Faustina, however. She listened with avidity. She co-operated with zeal. She suggested such modifications and improvements for securing the success of the conspiracy, and the safety of the conspirators, as only her woman's tact, inspired by the demon, could invent.

"Oh, the she-sarpint! the deadly, wenemous, pisonous sarpint!"

shuddered Katie, in her hiding-place. "I've heern enough this night to hang the shamwally, and send all the rest on 'em to Bottommy Bay.

And I'll do it, too, if ever I live to get out'n this room alive."

But at that instant the catastrophe that Katie had dreaded occurred.

Katie sneezed--once, twice, thrice: "Hick-ket-choo! Hick-ket-choo!

Hick-ket-choo!"

Had a bombshell exploded in that room it could not have excited a greater commotion. Lord Vincent sprang up, and in an instant had the eavesdropper by the throat.

"Now, you old devil, what have you got to say for yourself?"

demanded the viscount, in a voice of repressed fury, as he shook Katie.

"I say--Cuss my nose! There never was sich a misfortunate nose on anybody's face--a-squoking out dat way in onseasonable hours!" cried Katie.

"How dare you be caught eavesdropping in these rooms, you wretch?"

demanded the viscount, giving her another shake.

"And why wouldn't I, you grand vilyun? And you her a-plotting of your deblish plots agin my own dear babyship--I mean my ladyship, as is like my own dear baby! And 'wretch' yourself! And how dare you lay your hands on me? on me, as has heern enough this precious night to send you down to the bottom of Bottommy Bay, to work in de mud, wid a chain and a weight to your leg, you rascal! and a man with a whip over your head, you vilyun! 'Stead o' standin' dere sassin' at me, you ought to go down on your bare knees, and beg and pray me to spare you! Dough you needn't, neither, 'cause I wouldn't do it! no!

not if you was to wallow under my feet, I wouldn't. 'Cause soon as eber I gets out'n dis room I gwine right straight to de queen and tell her all about it; and ax her if she's de mist'ess of England and lets sich goings on as dese go on in her kingdom. And if I can't get speech of the queen, I going to tell de fust magistet I can find--dere! And you, too, you whited salt-peter! you ought dis minute to be pickin' of oakum in a crash gown and cropped hair! And you shall be, too, afore many days, ef eber I lives to get out'n dis house alive!" shrieked Katie, shaking her fist first at one culprit and then at the other, and glaring inextinguishable hatred and defiance upon both. For righteous wrath had rendered her perfectly insensible to fear.

Meanwhile the viscount held her in a death-grip; his face was ghastly pale; his teeth tightly clenched; his eyes starting.

"Faustina, she is as ignorant as dirt, but her threats are not vain.

If she leaves this room alive all is lost!" he exclaimed in breathless excitement.

"She must not leave it alive!" said the fell woman.

Katie heard the fatal words, and opened her mouth to scream for help. But the fingers of the viscount tightened around her throat and strangled the scream in its utterance. And he bore her down to the floor and placed his knee on her chest. And there was murder in the glare with which he watched her death-throes.

"Faustina!" he whispered hoarsely, "help me! have you nothing to shorten this?"

She flew to a cabinet, from which she took a small vial, filled with a colorless liquid, and brought it to him.

He disengaged one hand to take it, and then stooped over his victim.

And in a few moments Katie ceased to struggle.

Then he arose from his knees with a low laugh, whispering.

"It is all right."

CHAPTER XXI

NEWS FOR ISHMAEL.

December's sky is chill and drear, December's leaf is dun and sere; No longer Autumn's glowing red Upon our forest hills is shed; No more beneath the evening beam The wave reflects their crimson gleam; The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold And wraps him closely from the cold: His dogs no merry circles wheel, But shivering follow at his heel; And cowering glances often cast As deeper moans the gathering blast.

--_Scott._

"Ah what is good must be worked for," wrote the wisest of our sages.

Ishmael felt the truth of this, and worked hard.

His first success at the bar had been so brilliant as to dazzle and astonish all his contemporaries; and upon the fame of that success he prospered exceedingly.

But Ishmael well knew that if it needed hard work to win fame, it needed much harder work to keep it.

He felt that if he became idle or careless now, his brilliant success would prove to be but a meteor's flash, instead of the clear and steady planet light he intended it to become.

He read and thought with great diligence and perseverance; and so he often found a way through labyrinths of difficulty that would have baffled any less firmly persistent thinker and worker.

And thus his success, splendid from the first, was gaining permanency every day.

His reputation was established on a firm foundation, and be was building it up strongly as well as highly.

Strangers who had heard of the celebrated young barrister, and had occasion to seek his professional services, always expected to find a man of thirty or thirty-five years old, and were astonished to see one of scarcely twenty-two.