"Yes," she answered, quietly.

Silence fell for the s.p.a.ce of a few moments. Lance drove on mechanically, drawing his breath hard like a hunted animal.

He roused himself at last and spoke in a cold, constrained, unnatural tone.

"Then I will marry you, Mrs. Vance," he said. "I cannot promise to love you, nay, I can hardly give you the respect I would think the natural due of some other woman. But since I have injured your honor I will give you the shelter of my name."

"Thanks, a thousand thanks," she murmured.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

Mr. Shelton did not think it expedient to communicate to Mr. Lawrence the startling fact that the beloved daughter whom he mourned as dead was yet numbered among the living.

He had not the heart to give him this joyful a.s.surance and then offset it by the statement that she was immured somewhere in the walls of a prison in the power of two wicked and unscrupulous men.

He determined, if possible, to trace out her whereabouts and rescue her before revealing the whole truth to the sorrowing father.

He therefore compromised the matter by telling a portion only of the truth to the banker.

Namely, that he had traced the body of the young girl to a certain house in the suburbs, but that it had been removed thence when he went to look for it, and that he was following up a new clew which he confidently hoped would soon lead to its recovery.

He also added the fact that Doctor Pratt and Harold Colville were the guilty parties in the matter.

Mr. Lawrence was anxious at first to have these two men arrested and forced to acknowledge their guilt and return the missing body, but he yielded to Mr. Shelton's contrary persuasions on being a.s.sured that such a proceeding might result in the disastrous failure of his plan.

"For though we might imprison them, Mr. Lawrence," said he, "the rigor of the law could not force them to divulge their dreadful secret unless they chose to do so. It is only too probable that they would maintain the most obstinate silence on the subject. Therefore let them go free a little longer, and let us oppose cunning to cunning, and fraud to fraud until we attain our end."

The banker acquiesced, and the detective hurried away, for he was resolved that the wily schemers should not elude him again as they had certainly done on the occasion of the removal of Lily Lawrence from the Leverets' house.

Once more he and his faithful colleague took up their task of espionage, but it was unavailing for weeks. Harold Colville had conceived a dim suspicion that he was watched, and was therefore doubly vigilant and wary. For more than a month he did not visit Lily, but contented himself by receiving cautious bulletins of her welfare from Doctor Heath, weekly. The messages went through the mails and were directed to a fict.i.tious address.

In these careful weeks a new scheme was revolving in Colville's brain, always fertile in evil. He was growing heartily tired and impatient at Lily's obstinacy, and was frightened lest some unforeseen accident should s.n.a.t.c.h his lovely prize from him. He began to realize that Lily would never yield her consent to become his wife, yet he swore to himself that he would never give her up. He determined, therefore, on a forced marriage.

"What do you think of it?" said he to his familiar, Pratt, after detailing his fears and anxieties to that worthy, and stating his final resolution. "Would that do?"

"Excellently well," said Pratt, who began to feel as anxious as Colville about the obstinacy of their prisoner. "It is the best thing we can do.

Our position is becoming environed with difficulties. If we had not removed her from Leveret's just in the nick of time, that detective, Shelton, who found the bodies of Haidee and Peter, must inevitably have discovered her, and ere this hour we must both have seen the inside of a prison. Yes, it would be infinitely wiser to force a marriage with the perverse little jade and carry her off to Europe if need be. Seeing herself thus irrevocably bound to you, she would understand that her only hope of happiness lay in reconciliation and she would act accordingly."

"Marry it shall be then," said Colville, with a brightening face. "But when, and by whom? Could we find a priest who would read the ceremony over us under the peculiar circ.u.mstances of the case?"

"Never fear for that," said Pratt, laughing. "I can find you a priest in New York who would do the deed without any twinges of conscience for a pocket full of money. Leave that to me, and when I have found him I will report progress and you shall name the happy day."

"It will be a speedy bridal if I am allowed to usurp the lady's usual prerogative and name the day," returned Colville, in a fine humor with himself at the near prospect of his union with the beautiful Lily.

"It will be better to allow her the chance of doing so," replied Pratt, sarcastically. "Ladies are great sticklers for these small points of etiquette, you know. After we have settled the preliminaries we will slip out there some dark night in disguise and acquaint her with the good fortune in store for her, and give her a chance to yield gracefully. Should she still refuse we will make no more ado about it, but take the priest out there next day and marry the beauty w.i.l.l.y-nilly."

"It is settled, then," said Colville, "and I shall write myself 'Bened.i.c.k, the happy man.' But, apropos of that, Pratt, whom do you imagine the chained prisoner found at Leveret's could be? I had no idea the devils were carrying on such a double game."

"Nor I," said Pratt. "I have indulged in a great many surmises respecting that mysterious prisoner, but cannot arrive at anything satisfactory."

"Have you fancied it might be _f.a.n.n.y_?" inquired Colville, fearfully, while drops of perspiration broke out upon his brow.

"Yes, I have fancied it might be she," answered Pratt, coolly. "Perhaps old Peter and Haidee played us false, and did not kill her as you desired. We were not strict enough with them. We should have demanded a sight of the body for our a.s.surance."

"Where is the woman they found?" asked Colville.

"I have tried to learn her whereabouts diligently," said Doctor Pratt, "but only ended by asking myself the same question you asked now. It is rather strange, too; I should have thought there would be no difficulty, but there seems to be a mystery connected with her removal."

"If I could find her, and it prove to be f.a.n.n.y, I would kill her,"

muttered Colville, with a fearful oath.

"Perhaps she is dead already," replied the physician. "The papers described her as being too far gone to give her name or any evidence regarding herself. Probably she has succ.u.mbed to her great weakness and died."

"I hope so," replied the other, "for I have felt horribly afraid that she might prove to be f.a.n.n.y."

"The killing of those two wretches was a most mysterious affair,"

remarked Pratt, musingly.

"Have you any suspicion as to the perpetrator?" asked Harold Colville.

"Not the slightest. It is a most mysterious affair to me. The wildest conjecture fails to fathom it."

"Whoever the mysterious poisoner may be he has my sincere thanks and best wishes," said Harold Colville, sardonically. "I owed the wretches a grudge for their attempt on Lily's life!"

"Yes, their death is eminently satisfactory to me," remarked Pratt. "I was casting about in my mind for some safe way to punish their perfidy without getting into trouble myself, when this opportune accident to their health stepped in between me and my meditated revenge. A pious person might almost call it an intervention of Providence.

"I dare say we should have called it an intervention of the devil if we had not been fortunate enough to carry my lady off safely the night before it happened," laughed Colville.

"After all, their plot to kill her was rather fortunate, since we came in just in time to frustrate it," answered Pratt, "for if they had not conspired against her life we should not have thought of removing her that night and she must have fallen into the detective's hands on the ensuing day."

"The devil takes care of his own. I am certain his satanic majesty helped us in that affair," was the laughing reply.

The two villains continued to indulge in these pleasing retrospections of the past for some minutes, then separated, the physician going off on his medical duties, and the man about town to some of his familiar haunts of dissipation.

As they emerged from the hotel, each man, unconsciously to himself, was followed by another man who stole forth from the corridors of the building.

One of those men--the same who now followed Pratt--had been outside of Colville's door, with his ear glued to the keyhole during the progress of their interesting conversation. It was Mr. Shelton, the detective.

How little the two conspirators dreamed of what ears had listened to their nefarious schemes of forcing their victim into a loathsome marriage by the aid of some priest who disgraced the holy robe he wore by such sacrilege.

Fate was weaving her web silently but rapidly around the two wicked plotters, and ere long they would receive their reward.

Mr. Shelton had learned several facts unknown to him before while listening to that private conversation. He resumed his weary task of espionage, infused with new hope and courage, feeling within himself the consciousness that he must and would succeed.